
mmmmmmmm 



^xSx|>#<g><^'$#^ 



:^-^;^:^^:^;S;%%f>$^i:^'-i 









i^ingdoin 

© 

:Datieiice, 



ILIBIURY OFCONGRESS.fi 

|l«P |oK"9W Ifo 

J7Ae// ..5..k.8..3 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: f| 



PATMOS; 



OR, 



THE KINGDOM AND THE PATIENCE, 



PATMOS; 



OR, 



The Kingdom and the Patience. 



BY y 
rev. j/a. smith, D.D., 

Editor of ^' The Standard," Chicago ; and Author of '' Memoir of 

Nathaniel Colver, D.D." '' The Spirit in the Word." 

^' The Shetland Apostle," Etc,, Etc. 



*' The Kingdoin and Patience of Jesus Christy — Rev. i. 9. 



CHICAGO: 

S. C. Griggs and Company. 

1375. 




A^^ 



o\ 



y ^.^^ 



The Library 
OF Conor ESS 



WASHINGTON 

Entered ''T^nrr'''"Q ""^ A^«-.^f r'^^g> j .:,. i^ f.^>... 1875, by 



S. C. GRIGGS & CO., 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, 



Printed at 



The Lakeside Press. 



Preface 



In practical Christianity two main ideas continually 
reappear^ each represented by a perso?iality. These rep- 
resentative personalities may be characterized^ variously ^ 
as Redeefner and redeemed^ Giver and recipient^ Master 
and disciple^ Leader and follower^ Sovereign and subject. 
The setti?ig forth of Christ and his work in saving and 
reigning^ and the Christian in his relation to Christy and 
Christian work in its relation to Christ's work and the 
great purpose it achieves — this may^ perhaps, without too 
rash a generalization, be declared to be the ivhole of the 
New Testament, and the w^hole of didactic Christianity. 

It is the purpose of these pages to set these respective 
personalities, with the ideas they represent, in some of 
their mutual relations, and to find there a lesson. The 
writer desires simply to offer his contribution of service in 
the cause that is dear to many hearts. He hopes to do 
this by stirring here and there a Christian soul to earn- 
estly strive after higher spiritual attainment and a ?iobler 
record of usefulness. In this hope he lays his gift on the 
altar, only wishing it were better and ivorthier. 

J. A. S. 

Chicago, Jan, i, 1875. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

PAGE. 

Jesus before Pilate, - - - - - 13 

II. 
John in Patmos, ----- 43 

III. 

The Disciple as his Lord, - - - 73 

IV. 

The Fellowship of Suffering, - - loi 

V. 

The Fellowship of Service, - - - - 127 

VI. 
The Kingdom, ------ 153 

VII, 

The Patience, -- - - - -181 

VIII. 

Progress and Consummation, - - - 207 

IX. 

Endurance unto the End, - - - - 233 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 

Iisr one of the London picture galleries hangs 
a painting* by the brilliant French artist, Gustave 
Dore, the subject of which is, '' Christ leaving the 
Prsetorium." With a Roman soldier a few steps 
in advance, a prisoner yet unbound, guiltless yet 
condemned, he descends the long and broad flight 
of stairs from the palace occupied by the Roman 
Governor. An excited multitude await him be- 
low, ready to escort him with menaces and deris- 
ion as he is "led away to be crucified." 

Near the person of Jesus, and partly behind 
him, one sees the High Priest, Caiaphas, with the 
triumphant scowl upon his brow. A little higher 
up stands Pilate. The balconies and windows of 
the edifice are filled with spectators ; while down 
below, amidst the crowd, one detects the figure 
of Judas, turned partly away, yet with side- 
glances watching the descending form of the Be- 
trayed One. Some of the faithful few are there 
also ; the Marys, the penitent disciple who denied, 

* Described in an English paper. 
16 



16 P ATM OS, 

the loved and loving one who had dared to enter 
with him into the High Priest's presence. In all 
the crowd, however, one Person only is really seen. 
As of those present no one was conscious of any 
save Him, so on the canvas all interest concen- 
trates in that touching personality, solitary amidst 
the crowd, an object of fellest hate, of utmost 
contempt, and yet of such absorbing attraction 
that it is as if he stood there alone. The patient 
face is white with suffering ; the shameful crown 
of thorns is on his head, and where it pierces him 
the blood starts and slowly trickles down ; his own 
seamless garment is on him, descending gracefully 
to his feet. One hand hangs by his side, the other 
is concealed in the folds of his robe. Mingled 
sorrow and pity shine in the gentle, star-like eyes, 
and his lips are as if already they prayed for his 
murderers. 

The moment selected by the artist is that when 
Pilate, having finished his own examination, de- 
livers up Jesus to be crucified. The mocking and 
the scourging are ended, and there remains now 
only the cross. Among the various incidents of 
these preliminary proceedings, perhaps no one is 
more suggestive than that of the private interview 
to which Pilate summoned Jesus, in the inner hall 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 17 

of the Praetorium, and which, at the moment seized 
by the artist, had just been concluded.* In obe- 
dience to this summons of his judge, Jesus had 
withdrawn with him from the more public examina- 
tion in which his enemies had taken part, and had 
now met him in that interior portion of the palace 
where he was accustomed to sit in judgment. So 
far as appears, save for such guards as may have 
been present, they were alone. f Without, per- 
haps, might still be heard the excited murmur 
of the crowd, yet the interruptions of captious 
priests, and the vociferations of a furious populace 
could not reach them here. Thus they met, face 
to face, and here, in this private audience, were 
spoken the question and the answer which to suc- 
ceeding times and men have come to mean so 
much : 

" Art thou a king, then ? " 
'' Thou sayest it ; for I am a King." 
These two personages whom we find meeting 
thus, in circumstances of such surpassing interest, 
are both representative personages. In Pilate ap- 
pears, first, the Roman ; representative of worldly 
power and supremacy, of all that is imperial and 
usurping in worldly rule. He is, next, a Rom'an 

* John xviii., 33-38. f John xviii., 28. 



18 PA TMOS, 

soldier and general, and so the type of the mili- 
tary spirit in its most energetic manifestation, of 
that art, in its perfection, by which nations are 
subdued and the boundaries of empire are pushed 
to the world's end. He is a politician. The ar- 
gument which prevailed at last over all his reluc- 
tance to put to death one innocent of crime, iii 
whom he himself had found '' no fault," was : '' If 
thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend." 
To stand well with the emperor was for him the 
indispensable thing, not to be sacrificed even in 
the interests of conscience, justice and humanity. 
That spirit which holds political advancement as 
the chief good, has seldom had a more eminent 
example than in Pilate, and so to the end of time 
he may stand as the representative of those attend- 
ants upon royal courts, or those servitors of popu- 
lar caprice in republics, who know so well how to 

*' Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, 
That thrift may follow fawning." 

That Pilate was a sensualist may be inferred 
from the fact that he w^as a Roman in that degen- 
erate age when sensualism among wealthy Romans 
was universal. That he might equally well rep- 
resent the philosophical spirit of his time, is evi- 



yESUS BEFORE PILATE, 19 

dent from his careless question, " What is truth ?" 
to which, in his scorn of the notion that any truth 
is attainable, or of any value when reached, he 
did not even wait for an answer. A sceptic, a 
sensualist, a supple politician, a soldier, a Roman, 
there sat that day, in his person, in the judgment- 
seat before which the meek Man of Nazareth 
stood, worldly power in its most formidable shape, 
the worldly spirit, sensual, selfish, godless, cruel ; 
just as in ages then close at hand the disciples of 
Jesus would encounter it, and as, under one form 
or the other, it v/ould continue to represent itself 
to the end of time. 

If we turn, next, to look upon him who stands 
before Pilate in this interview, no contrast could 
be greater. The traces of days of fasting and 
nights of prayer are worn into the pale face ; the 
stains of travel are upon the mean garments and 
the dusty sandals. Not the man of pleasure, but 
the Man of Sorrows, is this ; one whose person is 
familiar, not in courts and palaces, but in dwell- 
ings of the poor, and along the highways or up 
the mountain sides whither the throngs of the 
suffering and diseased have followed him. The 
ignominy which, during the three years of his 
ministry, has continually sought him, has at last 



20 PA TMOS. 

found him. It lias led him through the streets of 
the city amidst the hoots of the rabble. It has 
arraigned him before the arrogant high-priest as a 
blasphemer, and now it tries to fasten a still 
deeper odium upon him as a mover of sedition, a 
disturber of the public peace, seeking to realize 
some impossible dream of personal promotion. 
Nothing less than death will satisfy his accusers, 
and no death less shameful than the most shame- 
ful of all. 

''Art t'ho2i a king?" 
'' Thou sayest it : for I am a King." 
In what sense Jesus, as he thus appears in his 
humiliation before Pilate in his pride, makes this 
claim, we gather from the words he himself spoke 
in explaining it. '' To this end," said he, '' was I 
born, and for this cause came I into the w^orld, 
that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every 
one that is of the truth heareth my voice." Is it 
possible that these words implj^ such a thing as 
royalty in the person or in the mission of him who 
speaks them? To Pilate it was not possible : to 
us it is certain. It was to him an absurdity to 
speak of truth as a kingdom, and one bearing 
witness to the truth as a king. To us it is the 
announcement of an order in the world destined 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 21 

to become at last supreme, and whose spirit, 
whose method, whose power, even, were repre- 
sented in the person of Jesus that day. 

It is a striking fact, that of these two person- 
ages the really conspicuous one proves to have 
been not the judge but the culprit. According to 
all ordinary rules this person, thus arraigned, 
should have appeared in history simply as one 
among the many who in that troubled period be- 
came notorious as instigators or instruments of 
popular discontent, and who ended a career of 
crime in a death of ignominy. Even granting 
that what Jesus had done was in no sense crimi- 
nal, that on the contrary no act was on record 
against him in which injury had resulted to a sol- 
itary human being, while the story of his earthly 
life was crowded with acts of beneficence, still, 
upon the theory that he '' deceived the people," 
even upon the theory that he deceived himself, 
and mistook for divine power some abnormal 
physical gift, and for evidence of a divine mission 
achievements like the feats of one half a juggler 
half a benefactor ; in any case, were Jesus simply 
what some, in strange inconsistency with what 
they have said of him in other respects, have tried 
to believe and persuade others to believe he was, 



22 PA TMOS. 

his condemnation by Pilate should have been just 
one out of numberless such incidents in human 
history. Jesus of Nazareth should be remem- 
bered, if at all, purely as a singular person, re- 
markably endowed in certain respects, who seemed 
to use his gifts, whatever they were, for the relief 
of human distress in many forms, yet whose 
course nevertheless excited popular tumults and 
ended in his falling into the hands of the Roman 
Governor, and suffering death as a disturber of 
the peace. Even his eminence as a teacher could 
scarcel}^ change this, for the world has had many 
eminent teachers. 

What was such a one in comparison with the 
prosperous courtier, politician and soldier who sat 
in judgment upon him ? Pilate's administration 
in the procuratorship of Judea was an incident in 
the world-wide, magnificent domination of mighty 
Rome. The greatness of the empire which he 
represented made him great and formidable, and 
his name in Jerusalem was spoken with dread, 
while that of Jesus, save among the few Avho loved 
him, was never mentioned but with derision. 
How strange that Pilate should, save for his con- 
nection with Jesus, have no memorial except such 
as doubtful tradition gives him, while Jesus has 



yESUS BEFORE PILATE. 23 

entered into all subsequent history as the grandest 
figure there ! All the distinction which the judge 
possesses among men, the Culprit has himself 
conferred in the simple fact that from him he re- 
ceived his sentence of death, by his command was 
scourged like a slave, and by his command, as if 
he had been the vilest malefactor, crucified at last. 
What is it to be a king ? A question easily 
answered according to the common acceptation of 
words. But that would not be the true answer. 
Such kingship as we commonly represent by the 
word is only a symbol, at the best. Often it is 
not even that. Often it is pure pretense and 
sham. But when real, it is still only a symbol. 
There is something back of it, and under it, far 
greater than itself, and which must lend to it all 
the claim it can have to human recognition or 
homage. The name it bears is nothing. It may 
have many names. The seat it fills is nothing — 
be it throne or chair, the occupant may be equally 
a king. Whether the abode assigned it be called 
a palace, or whether it bear some less pretentious 
name, does not matter. Whether it rules abso- 
lutely, or under the restraints of constitutions 
and in binding co-ordination with parliament or 
congress, if the essential element of kingship be 



24 PA TMOS. 

in it, the result is the same. Many a ruler called 
a king has been not even "• a king of shreds and 
patches " ; many a one who would have believed 
it a crime to accept the title, was a king never- 
theless. 

One element of the true kingship is personal. 
There are those in whom men find an assemblage 
of qualities which commands their instinctive 
homage. What these qualities are, few, perhaps, 
ever stop to consider, at least in any precise 
analysis of them. Why the individual they rev- 
erence is so superior, they may never ask : that 
he is so, is the fact which has demonstrated and 
impressed itself; and accepting this fact as a kind 
of creed, they hold it with a tenacity, and a sort 
of religious zealousness, which makes the calling 
of it in question a species of sacrilege. This 
recognition of personal pre-eminence is an essen- 
tial element in what is termed loyalty. It is one 
of the advantages which royal birth and the 
actual occupancy of a throne give, that these 
become with so many a priori proof of the actual 
possession of that personal excellence which alone 
commands genuine homage. We come slowlj^ to 
the conclusion that one born great is not really 
so. The subjects of a monarchy, especially, are 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE, 25 

slow to be convinced that the occupant or the heir 
of the throne is wholly unAvorthy. They cling to 
that instinctive reverence which is the basis of 
their loyalty ; excuse and justify many things 
which in any other would be unqualifiedly con- 
demned ; make the most of whatever appearance 
of excellence there may be, and even amidst the 
clamors of that censure which at last may be 
wrung out of them, cling to the hope that they 
may j^et find themselves happily mistaken, and are 
loyal to the last. 

With all its faults, human nature has a real 
regard for excellence. It has, even, a continual 
hunger for some manifestation of such excellence 
that will justify homage. When it is cheated, as 
it often is, that is not because it takes pleasure in 
counterfeits, loves to be deceived ; it is rather 
because in its yearning for something noble to 
admire, something great to. honor, something true 
to trust, it consents to be convinced of the exist- 
ence of these qualities in spite of the many proofs 
to the contrary, hoping still for the best. Now, 
in only one person has history or experience dis- 
closed that supreme excellence which completely 
satisfies this yearning. In only one instance has 
human trust, in the particulars to which we have 
2 



26 PA TMOS. 

referred, never been deceived, the homage and 
worship of the heart never for an instant driven 
to feel itself cheated and defrauded. Truly it is 
a wonderful fact that the tribute of human nature 
in all its deepest and truest convictions to the 
person of Jesus, has ever been so unanimous. 
Without in any large degree perhaps thinking of 
him as one kingly in either his person or his office, 
for the main conception of him is as Saviour more 
than as king, there has been nevertheless a turn- 
ing toward him of a universal human sentiment 
which, even in those who have declined to receive 
him as a spiritual Redeemer, still has been not 
unworthy the name of loyalty. If ever some 
ribald sceptic has suggested a doubt as to the pre- 
eminent authority of his teaching, the absolute 
purity of his nature and his life, the perfection of 
his example, how unanimously and indignantly 
has the world stood up to protest ! How quietly, 
insensibly, gently, yet omnipotently, the magnet- 
ism of that wonderful personality has pervaded 
the life of men, won their reverence, kindled 
their affection, moulded their opinions, swayed 
their policies, corrected what was wrong, shaped, 
guided, consummated what at last all the world 
came to see was right. 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 27 

Nor is this confined to any class of men, any 
race, any association, social or national, any rank, 
high or low. Here is an instance in which a sin- 
gle personality becomes in perfection to nniversal 
human nature all that which other personalities, 
even the most commanding, could only be within 
certain limited bounds, and only in a limited 
degree. Might not one combining in himself 
attributes capable of this, and steadily as the 
ages grow winning his way toward that absolute, 
universal preeminence when '' every knee shall 
bow and every tongue confess," might not such 
a one truly answer to Pilate's question, '' Thou 
sayest it: for I am a King?" If Pilate could 
have foreknown what we now know, would he 
have even asked the question? 

Another characteristic of the genuine kingship 
is recognized supremacy. This involves position, 
the nature of the relations sustained, the measure 
and effect of the power exercised. A king is one 
who reigns. It matters less through what forms 
and methods of government he so reigns ; whether 
with or without the consent of his subjects ; 
whether because '' born in the purple," or by 
that nobler title which the suffrages of a free 
people give ; whether as himself the law, or as 



28 PA TMOS, 

executing and dispensing law ; — the quality of 
kingship is seen in him only as, alike in theory 
and in fact, he unites and consummates in himself 
the several functions of government, and exer- 
cises them in such a way as to be a rule7\ 

Confessedly, when Jesus, standing before Pilate 
that day, gave him such an answer to his question, 
appearances in the particular now considered were 
much against him. In what possible sense could 
rule, authority, supremacy be asserted of him ? 
Had he ever even laid claim to any such ? Certainly 
not, in any worldly sense. When the people 
would take him and make him a king, he hid him- 
self from them. At the same time, there had been 
at least foretokenings of that which the later ages 
were so fully to disclose. The common people, 
hearing him "gladly," observed that he taught 
"with authority, and not as the scribes." His 
doctrine was from himself, not derived and subor- 
dinate. His words were not echoes from the law 
and the prophets, but original utterances. Under 
all the meekness of his demeanor there was ma- 
jesty ; it was a conscious greatness which stood 
before them, wrapped around with that garment 
of humility; even enemies and gain-sayers were 
awed by his presence, as if conscious of something 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 29 

in him sovereign and supreme. In spite of the 
humiliation which, from his birth up, had charac- 
terized his condition, there had been seen in him 
what claimed homage and recognition. Even as a 
babe, there were those who knelt at his feet wor- 
shiping and offering rich gifts. Even as a child, 
sitting in the temple, the wise men of the nation 
stood about him wondering alike at his questions 
and his answers. Coming to the Baptizer in the 
garb suitable to his lowly condition, and known 
as yet only as the son of the Nazarene carpenter, 
there was that in him which made John say, 
'' Comest thou to me ? " The Devil in his temp- 
tation, knew that no meaner gifts than crowns and 
kingdoms could be offered to such a one as he. 
The very malice of his enemies proves tliat they 
saw in him something to dread, if not to reverence, 
while the desperate measures to which they re- 
sorted, were such as men never use when it is 
only weakness and insignificance with which they 
contend. 

Through all these scenes of his humiliation, 
Jesus moved a commanding presence ; the center 
of every group in the midst of which we see him 
— the observed of all, and equally recognized, in 
the greatness that belonged to him, in the plead- 



30 FA TMOS, 

ing petitions of the poor and suffering, the rever- 
ent attention of believing hearers, and the pale 
anger of those who feared him more even than 
they hated him. Not even did Pilate, that day, 
look upon him as a fanatic merely, nor did he 
treat that idea of kingship as if it were simply 
contemptible folly. Through all the words and 
acts of the judge there runs evidence of the secret 
consciousness of a mystery that subdued him, 
something commanding in even the brow pierced 
by thorns, in the wasted figure mocked with the 
insulting purple, in the sweet, mild eye which 
awed while it melted. Did Pilate's own secret 
heart say, '' This is not a king ? " 

We may say, therefore, that Avhat has since ap- 
peared in the history of that kingdom, whose 
foundation Jesus was even then so securely lay- 
ing, was not without conspicuous foretokenings in 
what men saw and knew of him even in the days 
of his humiliation. There is such a consistency 
between the humiliation and the exaltation that 
we see in the one a sure prophecy of the other. 
For such a one as Jesus to go from the Cross to 
the Throne, has never seemed a thing incredible. 
The mind accepts the transition as what might 
almost have been looked for. We can now see 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 31 

and say that it mu^t " haA^e been he that should 
redeem Israel." Wherem, then, let us next ask, 
do we find the supremacy thus foreshadowed actu- 
ally appearing ? 

First, we may say, in the realm of human 
thought. What men tMnk is a matter of far 
greater moment than many seem to suppose. It 
is so natural for us, in this material world where 
we live, to estimate both reality and value by ma- 
terial standards, that the undervaluing of a thing 
so intangible and seemingly unsubstantial as the 
thought of the mind, is in no degree surprising. 
And so, it is quite possible that when Jesus said 
to Pilate, '' My kingdom is not of this world," 
the question may have been in the Governor's 
mind, '' Then how is it a kingdom at all ? " A 
kingdom dealing with things unseen, with inter- 
ests so unlike those which occupy men's hopes and 
energies ; destitute of organization, paraphernalia, 
ministers, armies, even a crown, a scepter or a 
throne ? To us, even, it may seem that it can be 
only in a figurative way of speaking that the Bible 
itself says so much of that King whose kingdom 
is not of this world. To rule in the world's 
thought, though it be with ever so much of su- 
premacy, is this to rule actually ? We answer 



32 PA TMOS. 

Yes^ and because the world's thought rules all 
those thmgs with which worldly kingdoms deal. 
Original kingship is with him who reigns in hu- 
man minds and human hearts. He is the King of 
kings, since that which kings themselves are com- 
pelled to consult, and to which they are even 
compelled to pay homage and submission, which 
rules them, he himself rules. 

Real human history is the history of human 
thought. A single mind, pondering some preg- 
nant principle at a period perhaps when to utter 
its meditation will be at the peril of life itself, 
may seem to be a very frail and ineffectual thing. 
If it dare to speak out its thought, it does so per- 
haps crudely, imperfectly, doubtfully. It sows a 
seed, and upon the young shoot that springs up 
Power sets its foot, and you would say that is the 
end of it. But other seeds get dropped. The 
winds of heaven carry them, no one can tell how. 
Mysteriously, wonderfully, in no long time, the 
young shoots appear all over the land. Persecu- 
tion begins, rages, triumphs, and yet somehow 
fails. The new thought lives, spreads, becomes 
universal ; persecutors become its promoters ; 
kings who hated it, love it and live upon it. Who 
once believed in freedom of conscience ? Who 



yESUS BEFORE PILATE. 33 

denies it now ? What king once thought that his 
power could be maintained with subjects allowed 
to think, speak, write, print, what they pleased ? 
What king now imagines that to rule a dumb and 
servile people is to rule at all ? What has killed 
oppression in its many forms but thought, taking 
form in words, and words growing into deeds ? 

It is thought that rules the world. But who, 
or what, rules thought itself? No candid mind, 
looking back over nineteen centuries, and study- 
ing the aspects of to-day, can doubt for a moment 
of the true answer. This fact is evident, for one 
thing, that all human development during this 
long period has been in directions foreshadowed 
in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The first prin- 
ciples, the germs of human progress, are found in 
that Sermon on the Mount. Every step forward, 
in whatever sphere of human thought, experience, 
life, has been just the incorporation in some per- 
manent form of what we there find. Philosophy, 
as its principles become clear and certain, con- 
forms to those germinal ideas as respects human 
nature and human relations, which Jesus uttered 
in that sermon. Literature, unconsciously to it- 
self, feels and owns the same force, and grows re- 
fined, noble, pure, true, in proportion as there 
2* 



34 P ATM OS. 

breathes in it the spirit which sat on the gracious 
lips of the Preacher that day. Society, without 
knowing it, adjusts its mutual relations by the 
rules he gave, and solves its problems with his 
simple law of love as the clue. And what, in- 
deed, is that new life which pervades the whole 
world of human thought, and makes its modern 
period so different from the ancient one — makes 
thought itself so much wider, grander, nobler, 
more humane, more reverent, more just and gen- 
tle, but the spirit of Jesus himself ? Can you 
think of any force save this, which manifestly 
forms and inspires the whole world of mind in 
this age of ours ? Upon this '' flood" of human 
thought, often so wild, tumultuous and stormy, 
who is it that '' sitteth King forever" but the 
Lord himself ? 

But next and no less, as has already been in 
some degree shown, we perceive this supremacy 
in the politics and governments of men. There 
will perhaps come a time when statesmen will di- 
rectly recognize the New Testament as their final 
authoritj^ in questions that concern government 
in its best forms. Even at present there is such 
a recognition, all the more suggestive because so 
unconfessed, and perhaps even unconscious. If 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE, 35 

you have before you the personal history of one 
of these statesmen, and from childhood up follow 
him in his education, in the influences that shaped 
his character, moulded his opinions, and gave the 
final form to all these principles which now he 
embodies in the laws and institutions of a great 
nation, you will see how real is this supremacy, 
and by what methods it realizes its ends. 

Perhaps there is no point as to which the ordi- 
nary phraseology is more at fault than that which 
concerns the governing forces — "the governing 
classes," as they are called — of a nation. Poli- 
tical power and governmental direction fall, of 
course, into certain hands, and in the forms they 
take express often the views, the motives, the 
spirit of individual men. But the power which 
rules in all and through all is only ascertained 
when it is known under what influences and by 
what hands these men themselves have been made 
in character, in principle, what they are. And 
when it is borne in mind to what an extent char- 
acter is permanently fixed in early youth, how 
seldom it is that a man radically changes from 
what he is made by his training under those in- 
fluences which sway him while he is yet pliable 
and his character easily wrought into definite 



36 PA TMOS. 

forms, it will be seen that the nominal rulers of a 
people are by no means always the real ones. 
When Napoleon replied to Madame de Stael that 
what France needed most was '' mothers," he 
showed his consciousness of a power more radical, 
more effective than his own, in whose hands the 
real destinies of the empire were lodged. It is 
amongst these radical and mighty forces of the 
family, the church, the school, that Christianity 
makes itself felt, and acting out from these cen- 
ters it sways and moulds governments and politics, 
and rules at last even the intercourse of nations, 
simply through this power which it has to mould 
and sway the individual man, and through him 
organisms, policies and laws. Now, Christianit}^, 
in this respect, is mainly the embodiment in faiths 
and forms of that divine Personality which once 
was seen on earth as the Man of Sorrows. It is a 
power just in proportion as it makes that Person- 
ality prominent ; as it brings it more into contact 
with individual heart and life. Not as a system 
does it rule the world ; not as a theology ; much 
less as an ethical philosophy: — but as a setting 
forth of Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Here, 
then, at these sources of individual and national 
life, we meet this Personality, As while upon 



yESUS BEFORE PILATE. 37 

earth Jesus deemed it no demeaning act to take 
little children in his arms and bless them ; so 
now, he deems it no demeaning of his kingly dig- 
nity that he plants the foundations of his univer- 
sal rule in individual hearts, and moulds life at its 
beginnings. Did he have some allusion to this 
when, as he blessed the little children, he said, 
'' Of such is the kingdom of heaven"? Did he 
mean, for one thing, that by teaching and forming 
the world's infancy he would rule its maturity ? 
When he compared his kingdom to the grain ol 
mustard-seed, did he mean that in planting the 
germ he would command the growth ? Can it be 
doubted, at all events, that he who rules in the 
homes and hearts of a people must sooner or later 
be supreme in their councils, and in the highest, 
largest sense be their King ? 

In the realm of faith, however, the supremacy 
of that personality of which we speak is mainly 
seen. If one were to compare, thoughtfully, the 
religious faith of the world at the present time 
with that Avhich it held and avowed at the time 
Jesus was upon earth, the astonishing change that 
has been wrought, together with the true signifi- 
cance of that change, would clearlj^ appear. Nor 
would we object, in making this comparison, to 



38 • PA TMOS. 

that view of the world's religious faith, now, 
which should group under that general term all 
the several forms of even professedly Christian 
belief, though it should be the most imperfect 
and faulty. Indeed, well-nigh the most striking- 
instances of the power exercised in the realm *of 
faith by Jesus as a Person would be found in 
forms of belief which have least of what is 
termed evangelical. It is not that these semi- 
infidels wish to retain the form of godliness while 
denying its power, that they still call themselves 
after Christ, and claim to be his worshipers and 
followers, so much as that the power of his per- 
sonality is stronger even than dislike for the 
spiritual nature of his kingdom, so that however 
they pervert his teachings, and would, if they 
could, change the whole character of that Chris- 
tianity which they profess and fight in the same 
moment, they cannot withold from him as a Per- 
son the recognition which that Person by virtue of 
its divine superiority compels. And so all the 
rationalistic sects cling to the name of Christian ; 
they write lives of Jesus ; they give the world 
labored commentaries upon his teachings ; they 
spend long years in studying the mysteries of his 
personal manifestation ; they never name him but 



JESUS BEFORE PILA TE, 39 

with that homage which men pay alone to recog- 
nized kings, the world's masters. What a change 
from Celsus or Lucan even to Strauss and Renan ! 
But this, of course, is by no means all that is 
to be said of the supremacy of Jesus in the realm 
of faith. We might illustrate the point by offer- 
ing to the reader a map of Christendom, and 
inviting him to mark how large a part of the 
world has been won for Christ, and how, even, 
the kingdom he founded has discovered new worlds 
that it might win these for him also. We might 
call the roll of the Christian denominations, and 
as voices should respond from all the islands and 
continents of the globe, and in all the dialects 
spoken by men, claim each as a witness to the 
supremacy of the one Name. We might copy 
out the creeds of evangelical Christendom, and 
show how in all these, differ as they may on 
speculative points, the one central doctrine re- 
mains always the same. Jesus is in all alike the 
sinner's hope, and to him every penitent, trusting 
soul bows down. Can anything be more manifest 
or more significant than this, that in what is from 
year to year and from age to age more and more 
the reigning faith of the world, Jesus himself 
reigns ? Did any crown ever shine upon any 



40 PA TMOS. 

brow so resplendent as that which even now 
gleams upon his, as the King reigning in right- 
eousness, mighty to save. 

We will only specify further, in this connec- 
tion, and that briefly, that kingship implies actual 
sovereignty^ a realm and a rule. Much which we 
might say on this point is already said ; other 
thoughts in the same connection will come more 
in place farther on. At present we will only say 
that the extent, and grandeur, and actual suprem- 
acy of our Lord's sovereignty are among the de- 
velopments of the world's advancing history. 
When an Apostle wrote : '' All things are yours, 
whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the 
world, or life, or death, or things present, or 
things to come ; all are yours and ye are Christ's 
and Christ is God's ; " the full meaning of his 
words was by no means then apparent. It 
has required twenty centuries to bring out into 
view even so much as we now know of what such 
words imply ; and there may be needed other cen- 
turies of development in the plan of God to 
disclose their full significance. Even as it is, 
however, we find in such a declaration, as now 
already become practical fact, proof that the 
sovereignty of Jesus is no rhetorical fiction ; that 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 41 

it is more, even, than just the figurative indication 
of some high, abstruse spiritual fact. There is 
nothing more real, practical, substantial in human 
experience than the reign of Christ in his king- 
dom of grace and power. At the center of the 
world's mighty movement, disordered, lawless, 
unregulated as it sometimes seems, there is yet 
this moral order which Christ has instituted, and 
through which he acts upon the world ; and as 
years and ages pass we find the vast scene of con- 
fusion adjusting itself to this center, and more and 
more acknowledging its directing . force ; while 
from the world itself, from life, from death, from 
the things j)resent and the things to come, from 
all the varieties of character, intellect, and spirit 
which we see in men proceed the instrumentalities 
by which Christ subdues all things unto himself. 
In the presence of such a divine fact, it well be- 
comes human pride to put off its haughtiness, 
human reason to confess a power mightier than 
itself, human authority to bow as to its master, 
while human hope and desire turn hither for their 
warrant and their realization. In the presence of 
this fact, too, we may sit down to study with 
profit any lesson of Christian truth or Christian 
duty, finding in it confirmation for the one, en- 
forcement and encouragement for the other. 



II. 

JOHN IN PATMOS. 



JOHN IN PATMOS. 

It is a fine example of the manner in which the 
inspired man loses himself in his subject, that the 
author of that wonderful book, the Revelation, 
confines to a single sentence his whole allusion to 
the peculiar circumstances amidst which he wrote : 
'' I, John, who also am your brother, and your 
companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and 
patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is 
called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the 
testimony of Jesus Christ." He left it wholty for 
others to s^jtvhat a "testimony'' in suffering and 
in fidelity he was bearing, as an exile for Christ's 
sake to that rocky isle ; left it to the contingen- 
cies of the future, and to the choice of others, 
whether it should ever become known what a 
trial he was that moment enduring for the Master 
he loved. It is so, we find, with the inspired 
man, always. His subject is " not himself, but 
Christ Jesus the Lord ; " and in the overmaster- 
ing interest of that which it is given him to de- 
clare, he forgets, almost, until for the sake of 

45 



46 PA TMOS. 

some added force in his appeal he deems it fitting 
to allude to it, the smart of the scourge, the gal- 
ling of the fetter, the rocky desert to which he is 
banished, or the death that momently impends. 
It is one proof of the reality of inspiration, that 
of the personal history and experience of the 
writers themselves we find only what the fit eluci- 
dation of their subject absolutely demanded. 
They were '' iu the Spirit," and wrote as the 
Spirit gave them utterance, self-forgetful, absorb- 
ed in their theme. 

So little did the first preachers of the Gospel 
provide for any record of their own personal his- 
tory, that even historians of times immediately 
subsequent found it difficult to trace the incidents 
of their career with any accuracy. For the most 
part, after all that these historians could do in 
finding such traces, the Twelve, after the few 
things recorded of them in the beginning of the 
Acts, pass away into utter obscurity, out of which 
only tradition speaks, in tones hesitating and 
doubtful. Of their labors, of their sufferings, of 
their death, we know almost nothing ; while of 
even some of those whose writings in the New 
Testament have laid the world under infinite in- 
debtedness, we scarcel}^ learn enough to connect 



JOHN IN PA TMOS. 47 

clearly and with entire satisfaction their names 
with their productions. Evidently, the Provi- 
dential guidance exercised in the general Chris- 
tian history has been with no view to satisfy 
curiosity or to glorify men. 

If we were to regret this in any instance — as 
most certainly we ought not — it would be above 
all in that of ''the disciple whom Jesus loved." 
The special affection — not favoritism, but the 
recognition simply of a character and spirit con- 
genial with his own — which the Lord felt for 
John, naturally directs attention to him in an 
unusual way. We feel that we would like to 
know more of him. Among biographies, his, we 
feel sure, would possess an interest peculiar and 
unique. The bosom-friend of Jesus I What a 
distinction is this ! And how suggestive of per- 
sonal qualities whose adequate delineation would 
supply one of the most engaging portraits in the 
galleries of time. We feel this the more, as all 
that we do read of him is so entirely consistent 
with the suggestions of this fact just mentioned. 
Plainly, his amiability was not a weakness, for was 
he not named by him whose discernments were 
infallible, a son of thunder? The courage, too, 
which held him to the side of Jesus when ex- 



48 PA TMOS. 

amined in presence of the High Priest, and made 
him not afraid to press close to the cross, where 
the dying eyes could see him and the djdng lips 
address him, indicate a character which with all 
its gentleness and sweetness, was still endowed 
Avith the essential elements of heroism. In the 
first trying days of the infant church, he stood 
side by side with the robust Peter as the cham- 
pion and spokesman of the threatened believers 
in Jesus. So far as history supplements the in- 
spired record, it justifies all that these incidents 
would promise. Great teachers of the age next 
following his own, Polycarp and Irenaeus, claimed 
it as a valued testimonial that the one directly, 
the other more remotely, had received the truth 
from the Beloved Disciple. Often as the same 
engaging figure reappears, whether in the history 
or the tradition of that age, it is always with 
somethino' to indicate the minoied reverence and 
love of his contemporaries, and to show that he 
was the beloved disciple to the last. Gladly 
would the Christian student trace minutely the 
career of this personage in whom so much noble- 
ness is mingled with so much sweetness, from that 
moment when he asked, '' Master, where dwellest 
thou?" to that when, for the last time, they 



JOHN IN' PA TMOS. 49 

brought him hito the Christian place of assembly 
at Ephesus, and for the last time he stretched out 
to the brethren his aged hands, with the words, 
" Little children, love one another." 

The island of Patmos is memorable, almost 
wholly, through its connection with the name of 
this disciple. Three times only does it find men- 
tion in classical literature : twice in passing notices 
by Strabo and Pliny, and once when we read of 
an Athenian general, pursuing '' as far as Patmos" 
the Spartan fleet.* As it lies out of the track of 
navigation in modern times, so in the times more 
ancient, it seems to have been but rarely brought 
into notice. When John was an exile there, it was 
probably almost uninhabited. A small town occu- 
pied the site of the present La Scala, the only port 
upon the island, located upon its eastern side, 
close to the narrow isthmus which divides the 
island into northern and southern sections. Per- 
haps, had the divine wisdom purposely selected 
this as the theater of those revelations which were 
made to John in his banishment hither, — and in 
some sense we may say that it did so, — none more 
suitable could have been chosen. Upon one of 
the two main peaks, into which the rugged land- 

* Stanley, " Sermons in the East," page 264. 



50 PA TMOS. 

scape rises, we might suppose him stationed, with 
the sea all about him, the craggy hills with their 
precipices at his feet, the whole island, with the 
indentations and twists occasioned by the numer- 
ous inlets and bays, taking, in some degree, the 
form of an enormous serpent or '' dragon," the 
clear Grecian heaven above him, swept occasion- 
ally, perhaps, by the sudden storm.* In sight, to 
the north and east, would be those districts of 
Asia Minor where lay the cities of the Seven 
Churches ; farther still, but more to the south- 
ward, he could behold, in fancy at least, the Holy 
City, scene of such wonderful events, and type of 
such great things yet to come. South and west, 
below the horizon, but none the less palpable to 
the eye of inspired imagination, was that other city, 
in which were symbolized alike the pagan impiety 
even then dominant, and the papal apostacy soon 
to arise. As he stood there, an exile for the dear 
Lord's sake, he represented in his own person the 
Christianity and the Christians of his own and 
every age. In the world, but not of it, persecu- 
ted but not forsaken, alone and yet not alone, 
since the '' Lo, I am with you alway " was mur- 
mured in every breeze that swept the stony 

* Stanley. 



JOHN IN PA TMOS. 61 

height, he was as the Christian must always more 
or less be ; such as the church itself must be, a 
stranger and sojourner, till the kingdom and the 
patience are consummated, at last, in the kingdom 
and the glory. 

In visiting spots such as this of which we now 
speak, the earnest wish which one feels that it 
might be possible to identify the incident with its 
precise locality, is a very natural one. Wisely, 
however, we are not left exposed to the tempta- 
tion to concentrate interest upon such minor fea- 
tures, or in our pre-occupation with them lose the 
inspired lesson. Tradition does, indeed, claim to 
show the cave in which the vision of the Apoca- 
lypse was seen, and over this a small chapel has 
been built. But this, like many another tradition 
connected with the holy places, is entirely unre- 
liable. It would seem more natural, in truth, that 
the vast panorama in which such mighty events 
were foreshadowed should have been witnessed 
from some more commanding locality, under the 
breadth of that heaven, which is so often used in 
the vision as a symbol of spiritual things, and 
where that sea of which such large use is made in 
symbolizing the world's stormy vicissitudes, and 
the wild, barren landscape around, might all min- 



62 PA TMOS. 

gle actually in the shifting scenery of this great 
drama, so unreal and yet so real. However this 
may be, we can scarcely select any one of the men 
named in the Bible, or for him any surroundings, 
more fitting for the utterance of those Avords, 
which mean so much, — ''the Kingdom and the 
Patience of Jesus Christ." Few men even of 
those most remarkable for spiritual experience 
could have entered so lovingly and willingly as 
John into the ''patience ; " to none of them did 
the " kingdom " stand forth more in its true mean- 
ing and true grandeur. 

We may, it is believed, with considerable pro- 
priety look upon the disciple and apostle John as 
a typical Christian man. Not in the strict sense 
of the word " typical," perhaps ; but as indicating 
in him a peculiar assemblage of those qualities and 
those experiences which best represent to us the 
idea of a true Christian. Let us try to illustrate 
this in a few particulars. 

What we mark in him, first of all, is his love to 
Jesus. If Christ is such a King as we have seen, 
the central, all commanding conception in every 
right view of the Christian scheme, and the right- 
ful Ruler alike in the world and in the heart, it 
follows that what he, in his gracious personality, 



yoHr<r in patmos. 53 

is to each one professing to belong to him, must 
be a matter of chief moment. By so much as he 
is rightfully supreme, by so much must the recog- 
nition of him be unqualified, genuine and loyal. 
But it is the peculiar fact in this relation, that it 
is primarily and above all a relation of love. In 
setting forth this truth the Scripture makes use 
of the tenderest images, and couches the concep- 
tion of what Jesus and the believer are to each 
other, under illustrations drawn from the nearest 
and most loving human relations. Perhaps the 
true interpretation of that remarkable book, the 
Song of Solomon — regarded by some as of such 
doubtful inspiration, and doubtful propriety even 
— will be suggested by the consideration how 
needful it was that this truth should be empha- 
sized in every possible way — the truth that 
Christian loyalty is not purely the homage of the 
intellect, still less formal service, and least of all 
a ceremonial observance, but a devotion of heart 
so intense and tender that only under an image 
of the most glowing manifestations of human love 
could it be adequately represented. The tendency 
is, ever, to make religion an observance, or else 
an ethical rule, or at the best an intellectual be- 
lief. The whole view given us, in both Testa- 



54 PA TMOS. 

ments, of the Christian relation, whether it be in 
doctrine, in precept, in poetical imagery, is, that it 
must be rooted in deep, tender, absorbing spiritual 
affections. We belong to Christ only as we love 
Christ. His kingdom is '' within" us, because it 
is in our hearts that he reigns. 

John stands, among his brethren of the Twelve, 
as in fact among believers of all time, as the loving 
no less than the loved disciple. His very faults 
were tinged by this sentiment. When, with his 
brother James, he asked permission to call down 
fire from heaven upon the Samaritan village which 
had refused shelter to the " Master," weary with 
wayfaring, we must suppose that it was indignant 
love for the Master's person which prompted the 
proposal. Jesus reproved him, because it is in no 
such ways that love for him is to be shown ; yet 
we cannot doubt that he saw in the request some- 
thing more and nobler than mere anger at an in- 
hospitable repulse. When, with the same brother, 
he desired, through his mother, that they might 
in the coming kingdom have the seats nearest to 
the throne, we are not obliged to interpret it as 
an impulse of mere ambition. Are we not at lib- 
erty to suppose that he who at table, when they 
supped, could be satisfied only as his head lay in 



JOHN IN PATMOS, 56 

the bosom of the Master, dreaded lest the exalta- 
tion of hhn who was now so humble might inter- 
pose a painful distance between them, and that to 
be near to Jesus was to him quite as much a mo- 
tive in his petition as to be great ? Jesus showed 
him, and showed the rest, that they would become 
likest the Master, and be brought nearest to him, 
hot by becoming greatest, in any sense of mere 
promotion or dignity, but by most becoming the 
servants of all. 

Whether correct in these suggestions, or not, 
we certainly cannot be mistaken in tracing in 
other acts of this disciple, and above all in his 
writings, signs of the fact how with him love to 
Jesus was a ruling, holy passion. His attitude, 
at the last supper, as he lay in Jesus' bosom ; his 
courageous attendance upon his person when ex- 
amined before the High Priest, under circum- 
stances where even the bold Simon flinched ; his 
position, close to the cross, when Jesus died ; his 
eager hastening to the sepulcher when the news 
came that the Lord had risen ; his ready recogni- 
tion of Jesus at the Sea of Galilee, when he heard 
the question, '' Children, have ye any meat?" — 
all that is recorded of him, while not intended to 
indicate the fact specially, still does indicate it, 



56 PA TMOS. 

that to this disciple the person of Jesus was an 
object of absorbing, intense devotion. So, like- 
wise, in his writings. His gospel and his epistles 
glow with the warmth and light of that passion 
which burned with such a steady flame in the 
writer's own heart. The conception of Jesus 
upon which his Gospel dwells, from first to last, 
is that which reverent, worshiping love supplies. 
It enters, as love always does, in its conception 
of the object or the being loved, into that which in 
the person, character, teaching and work is in- 
most, that which is the identical being ^ not alone 
its conditions, or its outward manifestations. The 
other evangelists tell us far more of the miracles 
of Jesus, more of the exterior facts of his earthly 
historv. When we come to John, it is like enter- 
ing the penetralia of a temple. He bids us take 
our shoes from our feet, as treading holy ground ; 
he speaks to us in words subdued, intense, as in 
the presence of awful mysteries, yet he lovingly 
lingers over each symbol of the divine presence 
there enshrined, and at every token of the grace 
bestowed on man, his eye kindles and moistens, 
and his tones grow tender. His interpretation of 
the whole is in the glowing, glad words, '' God so 
loved the world that he gave his Only-begotten 



JOHN IN PA TMOS. 57 

Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not 
perish, but might have everlasting life." 

So in his epistles, love is the theme ; love not 
only as a blessed fact, but as a mighty argument : 
'' Brethren, if God so loved us, we ought, also, to 
love one another." But perhaps the most signifi- 
cant indications of this spirit in John, we have in 
the Revelation. There is something touching 
in the eager intensity with which he seems to be 
ever, amidst the overawing magnificence of those 
splendid visions, looking for One beloved form 
and face. In the very first of these, when as he 
turns at the Voice that spake to him, he sees 
before him what so overpowers him that he falls 
as if dead to the ground, he yet recognizes in this 
awful form ''one like unto the Son of Man," and 
the love casts out the fear so that he can stand 
again upon his feet, while the melody of that 
familiar, loved tone,* strengthens him to look in 
the face of all that glory, no longer dismayed. 
Throughout the book, in all the visions as they 
unroll, he seems ever looking for the same loved 
Person, whether in his own actual form, or under 
some symbol or likeness ; the Lamb as if it had 
been slain; the Conqueror, going out to meet 

* See Rev. i. 14, 15. 
3* 



58 P ATM OS, 

Death and Hell ; the armed Archangel leading 
the hosts of Heaven ac^ainst the Dra(]:on and ]iis 
angels. His last word is a word of longing ; a 
prayer in which his own heart yearns for personal 
reunion, while at the same time uttering the uni- 
versal prayer of universal Christian longing and 
hope. To the word of grateful promise, '' Be- 
hold, I come quickly," he responds^ '-'- Even so^ 
come Lord Jesus, '^^ 

It is, therefore, in admirable keeping with the 
whole character and history of this disciple, 
when, in the Isle of Patmos, we find him a suf- 
ferer ''for the word of God, and for the tes- 
timony of Jesus Christ": when we find him 
summing up all that he bears and all that he 
hopes for as '' the kingdom and patience of Jesus 
Christ." Around that one Name revolve all his 
motives, all his labors and sufferings, all his joys 
and hopes. This is the Christian characteristic. 
''If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ," it 
is an impeachment of his whole Christian position 
utterly unanswerable. 

What next we observe in John is his fidelity. 
Is there a more beautiful word in the language 
than this word "fidelity"? To be "found 
faithful" — what can be nobler ? What higher in 



yoHM m PATMOS. 59 

human aspiration ? What more engaging in hu- 
man character ? Christian fidelity is the highest 
Christian attainment. So when it is said, '' Be 
thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the 
crown of life," it is just setting before us that 
ultimate and consummate excellence which is the 
goal of Christian progress. It is not, of course, 
offering the crown of life as the reward of mere- 
ly formal and perfunctory service. With many, 
there is reason to believe, being ''faithful" is 
simply not being in any marked way inconsistent. 
The word has passed into current religious phrase- 
ology with this, perhaps, as its chief meaning, 
implying, as well, in the idea of consistency, 
occupation in certain performances enjoined in 
formal religion. True fidelity is, first of all, an 
attainment in one's self; the outward act of fidel- 
ity is the fruit this attainment bears. That fidelity 
to which the crown of life is ofi^ered is fundament- 
ally all that in a Christian which makes him a 
Christian, and then this manifested to the world 
in acts, not of forced and formal service, but 
loving, willing observance of what the Lord 
ordains, whether as contained in express com- 
mands, or as inferential from the nature of the 
Christian relation itself. It is, first, " truth in 



60 PA TMOS, 



the inward parts," and then ''sacrifice and offer- 



ing." 



There is great need, among men, of such exam- 
ples of Christian fidelity as will justify that con- 
fidence in Christianity itself which is claimed as 
its due. The original fault in human character 
is exactly here. Sin began in disloyalty. The 
heart, in its trust and in its desire, turned away 
from God and from the good. It entered into 
parley with God's enemy, and with that evil which 
was watclring for just this open door through which 
to enter the Avorld. All sin is falseness toward 
God and toward what is good. All the misery 
and crime of the world are fruits of the heart's own 
vile treason. The distinctive feature of Christian 
character and attainment should be in such tho- 
rough contrast, in this respect, as that the world 
should be compelled to mark it, and learn a lesson 
by it. What, then, does that imply ? It implies 
much. It puts Christian men and women upon 
obligation to first of all he^ truly, genuinely, what 
their profession imports, and to prove that they 
are such, in a demonstration in which even censo- 
rious scrutiny shall not find a flaw. • This is the 
peculiar want of our times. The world is asking, 
'' Are Christians, after all, a peculiar people in 



JOHN' IN PATMOS. 61 

anj^ such sense as will justify their faith as di- 
vine ? " Our answer must be, not in word but in 
deed ; nor in deed only. We must not only do 
" good works," but must prove our Christian gen- 
uineness by showing that we are '' zealous of good 
works." It is the zealousness, not the works sim- 
ply, that must characterize the peculiar people. 

We do not find, in John, any ostentation of 
fidelity. We do not find him forward in declar- 
ing, " Though all men forsake thee, yet will not 
I," but he was exactly the one who did thus stand 
alone in fidelity. His career throughout was, ap- 
parently, more characterized by the quiet, firm, 
steady-going sort of Christian loyalty, than con- 
spicuous manifestations of that spirit amidst trying 
tests. We know, certainly, of no other such 
supreme test of his fidelity besides this which was 
afforded in his exile in Patmos. He had no such 
record as Paul had, none such as Peter could 
claim ] was called to no such ordeal as his brother 
James underwent, when threatened and finally 
smitten with the sword of Herod. He lived on to 
a great age, and died at last peacefully amidst the 
tears and blessings of the Ephesian church. At 
the same time, if we were to look for an example 
of fidelitv such as Christians of all times and con- 



62 PA TMOS, 

ditions might study with profit, it would be in 
John tliat we should find it, rather than in any of 
his brethren. His fidelity was shown, not in ex- 
ceptional ordeals, as was the case with others, but 
in those which more or less become the lot of all. 
Thus, in him very remarkably we find exemplified 
that which is the root and the support of such 
fidelity in a Christian. He is the Bayard of the 
Twelve; ''sans peur et sans reprochey We see 
him faithful, not simplj^ on certain great occasions, 
and in the face of certain great trials of faith ; but 
in an even course of steady Christian constancy, 
growing out of tliat in him which made it impos- 
sible for him to be untrue. His heart had touched 
the heart of Jesus, as he lay in his bosom, and 
thenceforth its every throb kept time to the same 
divine pulsation.- We have no reason to suppose 
that his mind ever entertained any other alterna- 
tive than that of perfect fidelity when tried ; that 
his heart ever cherished an impulse that was not 
loyal. 

Christians mistake when they view themselves 
as tested only in those conspicuous ordeals upon 
which the world fixes its gaze chiefly. All life is 
a test of fidelity. Christian heroism is called for 
and may be shown amidst the common experi- 



JOHN IN PA TMOS. 63 

ences of life almost more than in those extraordi- 
nary ones, where it may receive support from 
sources not wholly Christian. To be faithful 
when the motive to fidelity is alone or mostly a 
sense of what we owe to Jesus, and what Jesus is 
is in himself — this it is to be faithful indeed. 

John was still further a typical Christian in the 
purity and simplicity of his character. Among the 
great lawyers and jurists of England, there has 
been perhaps no one whose name shines in Eng- 
lish history with a purer luster than Lord Ten- 
terden. The son of a barber in Canterbury — '' a 
tall, erect, primitive-looking man, with a large 
club pig-tail, who might be seen going about with 
his instruments of business under his arm, attend- 
ed by his son Charles, 'a decent, grave, primitive- 
looking youth'" — Charles Abbot received the 
elements of education at an endowed school in 
Canterbury, and his university training at Oxford, 
through the generous and appreciative kindness 
of those in his native town, who perceived and 
recognized his early promise ; he ended his career 
as Lord Chief Justice of England. At one time 
his ambition soared no higher than to be made a 
chorister in Canterbury Cathedral. After he had 
become a nobleman and chief justice, as he was 



64 PA TMOS. 

going circuit with another judge, they one day- 
visited that venerable minster. Pointing to a 
singing-man in the choir, Lord Tenterden said, 
'' Behold, brotlier Richardson, that is tlie only 
human being I ever envied. When at school in 
this town, we were candidates together for a 
chorister's place ; he obtained it, and if I had 
gained my wish, he might have been accompany- 
ing you as chief justice, and pointing me out as 
his old school -fellow, the singing-man." 

After he had attained the degree of sergeant- 
at-law, and had been made judge, he assumed 
armorial bearings, in accordance with what was 
then the custom. He chose for his motto the 
simple word, Lahore, '' By labor," thus announcing 
to the world that by simple industry he aimed to 
rise. His contemporaries styled him '' the humble 
and the just." Even in the delirium of his last 
moments, he was at his post of duty. '' And now, 
gentlemen of the jury," were his words as he 
died, '^ j^ou will consider of your verdict." His 
epitaph, upon the monument reared to him at the 
Foundling Hospital, of which he was a governor, 
was written by himself. It '' tells how he was 
born of the lowliest parents, who were yet pious 
and prudent, and that the reader might learn 



JOHN IN PATMOS, 65 

by his example how much among Englishmen 
honorable labor may achieve with the favor of 
heaven." 

Such instances show how entirely possible it is 
to pass through the world, sharing in its most ac- 
tive and bustling scenes, winning the highest 
prizes, and yet not lose that guilelessness of char- 
acter which is the very best adornment our com- 
mon nature may have. It is a mistake to suppose 
that the Saviour's requirement that in our Chris- 
tian change we '^ become as little children," is to 
be taken otherwise than in its evident import. 
Other words of his imply that however " wise " 
in all that respects sagacious management of af- 
fairs or dealings with men we may become, w^e 
are still to be '' harmless." There is a subtlety 
w^hich is still consistent with integrity, and a 
shrewdness which a man may have, Avithout dan- 
ger to his honesty. Indeed, that only is true 
sagacity Avhich sees how these things, in the 
world's estimation so often incompatible, may be 
harmonized, and made to act in perfect alliance. 
Happy that Christian who, while not inferior to 
others in the culture and use of his best powers, 
and while achieving nobly what it is noble to de- 
sire, still wins that praise which Nathaniel must 



66 FA TMOS. 

have deserved, since infallible lips awarded it — 
'^ in whom is no guile." 

There is reason to believe that John became 
the peculiar friend of Jesus in a great measure, 
through his possession of those peculiarities of 
character to which we now refer. The attitude 
in which we are allowed to conceive him, lying in 
the bosom of Jesus, as they recline at table, might 
symbolize this. A confiding nature, demonstra- 
tive, childlike, conscious of no guile and suspect- 
ing none, animated by no wish to supplant others 
in claiming this intimacy with the common Mas- 
ter, and hence fearless of being so interpreted, 
drawn also by sympathy with a pure, gentle, ele- 
vated nature, kindred with his own, he takes this 
place because in every way it seems to be his. 
And, to all appearance, it is yielded to him with- 
out objection. A usurping, selfish, intriguing 
temper provokes always opposition. Men dislike 
pretension and pushing ; but when one falls as if 
by some law of nature into favored positions, or 
gains recognition without seeming to seek it, 
elbowing no one, practising no indirection, and 
using favor without abusing it — such a one will 
often hold his place Avith the cheerful acquies- 
cence of those most inclined to be envious. 



JOHN IJV PATMOS. 67 

It must be ever a most important fact that 
'' the kingdom of heaven is of such " as have 
been '-'- converted and become as little children." 
Christian character lacking the adornment of 
" simplicity and godly sincerity," not only stands 
impeached as to its genuineness, but fails wholly 
to represent adequately before the world that 
spiritual order of which it professes to form a 
part. Tlie world is ruined by its '' wisdom " ; 
that Avisdom in which it ''knows not God." It 
overreaches itself in the excess of its cunning, 
deeming it enough to be ''as the serpent," and 
despising the meek harmlessness of " the dove." 
The kingdom which is not of this world stands at 
this point in eminent contrast with that which is. 
It should be the aim of Christians to emphasize 
that contrast ; to justify those precepts of their 
great Master in which they are enjoined to be 
pure, just, gentle, each regarding the interest of 
another as equal with his own, and each copying 
the example of him who "pleased not himself." 

John was also a typical Christian in his love for 
the hrethren. That group of disciples to which 
John belonged was, we observe, much like every 
other group of men united by a common faith or 
a common interest. Their personal peculiarities 



68 PA TMOS, 

come out, in the course of the sacred narrative, in 
a very interesting way. Several of them were, 
in their original qualities of character, marked 
men, and as is always the case, these qualities 
sometimes indicated their presence by signs not 
always flattering to the individual. In due time, 
however, we find the discipline of grace and ex- 
perience producing its good result, and the man 
stands forth in the measure of the stature of his 
fulness as a developed Christian man. It is as 
thus, that we ought to estimate each one of the 
faithful eleven, rather than as seen in the crude- 
ness of his beginning as a new man in Christ 
Jesus. It would be very unfair to judge of 
Simon Peter simply by his one great failure to 
maintain his integrity ; or Thomas, by that utter- 
ance to wliich his natural tendency toward skep- 
ticism first prompted him ; or John or James by 
that one act of theirs in which they seemed seek- 
ing to get an advantage of their brethren ; or the 
whole group of them by what we are told of the 
contest amongst them, while on their way up to 
Jerusalem, '' which of them should be greatest." 
These are simply signs that the men of whom we 
read were like other men, faulty ; and, as has 
been often remarked, the fact that they tell these 



JOHN IN PATMOS. 69 

things of themselves is a striking testimony to 
the honest truth of their narrative. 

What each of these men really was, in his in- 
most character, comes out ultimately. We see, 
then, what it was that grace found in them to 
work upon ; what qualities to develop, energize, 
adorn, until each became so pre-eminently meet 
for the Master's use. A chief feature in John as 
thus become, in the finite sense, '^ a perfect man 
in Christ Jesus," is his love for the brethren. By 
this he is especially characterized in history ; this 
is the spirit that next to his love for the common 
Lord reig^ns in all his written words. Here at the 
beginning of this book of Revelation, for example, 
amidst the gloom and sorrow of his exile, as almost 
his first utterance, we find this spirit of Christian 
love expressed: '* I, John, yoi^r hrother smd 7/our 
companion in tribulation.^' Paul, in the opening 
of his epistle, though by no means deficient in this 
of which we are speaking, nevertheless announces 
himself in a different way : " Paul, an apostle of 
Jesus Christ.^' This was more fitting for him, as 
the apostolical teacher and organizer. But John 
begins by putting himself in relations of brother- 
hood and sympathy with all the suffering saints of 
God, wherever they may be. He takes by the 



70 PA TMOS. 

hand every weak, or tempted, or persecuted 
brother or sister, however obscure, however re- 
mote ; in Ethiopia, in India, in desolate Judea, 
cowering in the shadow of Roman imperialism or 
seeking to honor Christ amidst deriding Greeks ; 
whether among the faithful few of Sardis, or the 
imprisoned and suffering ones of Smyrna, or the 
patient souls of Philadelphia, or the tried but stead- 
fast ones in Ephesus, — to all these, and all in '' trib- 
ulation " everywhere, he gives his hand in loving 
fellowship : ''I, John, your brother.''^ He could 
write his epistles, reiterating there his " eleventh 
commandment " — '-'• a new commandment write I 
unto you, that ye love one another" — and find 
his words emphasized by his example. It was 
meet that the one of the twelve in whom this 
quality was so eminently conspicuous should be 
the one to live on into the days of persecution, 
that alike by his example and by his words, he 
might inspire the suffering church with that spirit 
of brotherly love which should serve as a solace 
and a testimony. Who shall say how much it 
was due just to him that in those early times 
the on-looking Pagan world were compelled to 
exclaim, '^ See how these Christians love one 
another ! " 



JOHN IN PA TMOS. 71 

111 nothing do we need more to call back the 
spirit of those primitive times than in this. We 
do not mean so much with any view to effect 
organic unity among Christians, as with a view to 
soften difference, whether among those of unlike, 
or tliose of identical denominational faiths; to 
make Christians tender in their judgments of each 
other, symj)athizing, appreciative, mutually help- 
ful ; to soothe our acrimonies, and calm our dis- 
putes, and enable us to '' keep the unity of the 
Spirit in the bond of peace." Oh, for a descent 
from heaven of that dew that fell on Hermon, and 
that came down on the mountains of Zion, '' when 
the Lord commanded his blessing, even life for- 
evermore ! " 



III. 

THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 

Thus do we bring again before ns two repre- 
sentative personages ; one a supreme embodiment 
of all that is most dear and all that is most mo- 
mentous to a Christian; the other representing 
within the Christian's own sphere, that which he 
hmiself should strive to be and to achieve. It 
falls to us, now, to consider these representative 
personages more in their mutual relation. 

'' It is enough that the disciple be as his Lord." 
A truth indisputable, almost axiomatic, yet one 
which needs to be studied, that what is contained 
in it may be seen and felt. We find the disciple 
in his exile on lonely, rocky Patmos ; we find his 
Lord standing before the unjust judge who, though 
he found no fault in him, nevertheless condemned 
him and sent him away to be crucified. We are 
forcibly reminded, as we turn from the one to the 
other, of that brief dialogue which took place be- 
tween these two — the disciple and his Lord — in 
the day when to one of them, at least, trial and 
suffering were things of the future — "'Are ye 

75 



76 PA TMOS. 

able," Jesus asked, '' to drink of vay cup, and be 
baptized with my baptism?" Said John and 
James, '' We are able." Jesus replied, '^ Ye shall 
indeed drink of my cup, and with the baptism 
which I am baptized withal, shall ye be baptized." 
The cup which Jesus drank as he stood before 
Pilate, John drinks in far-away Patmos. That 
baptism from which the Lord did not shrink, the 
disciple, with something at least of the same spirit, 
himself receives. The disciple is as his Lord. He 
knows the meaning of the words, '' The kingdom 
and patience of Jesus Christ^ 

There is a profound principle underlying these 
simple, easily understood facts. Let us see if we 
may trace it in a few words. 

'' The mystery of godliness" is '' God manifest 
in the flesh." Practical piety has its root, not in 
Christ's teaching, merely, but in Christ himself. 
In godliness, rightly viewed, mystery is necessa- 
rily involved ; understanding by '' mystery" that 
which Paul so often evidently means by the word 
— not something in every sense unfathomable, 
but something in itself beyond ordinary reach, 
yet revealed and so brought nigh, and made both 
comprehensible and attainable. In this sense 
even practical godliness is a mystery. He who 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 77 

thinks that in a few precepts of individual or so- 
cial morality, or even in the duties and services of 
formal religion, he has compassed all there is in 
true piety, is most seriously in error. There is 
that in the spiritual life of the soul, which utterly 
fails to be adequately expressed in such outward 
and superficial facts or rules. Even when the 
morality and the outward religious life most nearly 
approach the point of perfection, it is not in them, 
but in that out of which, as the living, fast- 
anchored root, they grow, that the essential ele- 
ment of all godliness consists. 

And this, while a mystery in itself, is born of 
the greatest of all mysteries ; no less a one than 
that of '' God manifest in the flesh, seen of 
. angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in 
the world, received up into glory." Doctrinal 
and practical Christianity alike begin here. This 
mystery is first to be received as truth, next to be 
incorporated in experience ; its realization in faith 
and life are the beginning and the end of all piety 
that deserves the name. 

This fact, of the incarnation of the Son of God, 
is doubtless a most amazing one. Each time that 
the thoughtful mind confronts it, a new emotion 
of wonder is awakened. That it should be 



78 PA TMOS, 

doubted by some, denied by others, is easily ac- 
counted for as we realize how entirely those 
amongst whom it is most surely believed are, in 
accepting it, thrown back upon their faith ; how 
utterly a mystery it is, a thing to be known only 
as revealed. Such faith, however, has its ample 
warrant. The thing itself becomes credible in 
the fact that this manifestation was in the person 
of one in whom all reality originates- '' In him " 
— him who became thus incarnate — the Word 
made flesh — " in him was life,'' All life proceeds 
from him, or through him. Tracing up to him, 
therefore, all these marvelous forms of life which 
fill the universe, inconceivable in number and 
variety, we see that in him must reside possibili- 
ties, both of creation and manifestation, absolutely 
infinite. If for an adequate purpose it pleases 
him to himself enter some form of personal mani- 
festation, incarnate himself, and become even a 
man, we see that this is to him an achievement 
infinitely easy. To deny that the Son of God 
could make himself thus incarnate, is nothing less 
than absurd. The question becomes, then, one of 
historical fact ; while the rationale of it will lie in 
the motive to a condescension so great, the pur- 
pose which in it divine power and divine benefic- 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD, 79 

ence would effect. With the former of these our 
present discussion is not properly concerned ; 
with the latter it is vitally involved. 

So far as essential character is concerned, its 
formation and development, personal contact and 
influence are of the utmost importance. All 
character, really, is formed in that way. Were it 
possible for an individual to spend his whole life, 
from infancy to age, in absolute isolation, there 
would be essentially no character at all. The 
whole constitution of man, moral, intellectual, 
social, presupposes contact with others, and all 
his qualities are to find development and culture, 
not as isolated growths, but as stimulated, guided, 
formed, perfected, in various social relations. 
Duty, and that sense of duty which we call con- 
science, pre-supposes other beings besides one's 
individual self. Beneficence, in all its forms, 
whether of feeling or expression, seeks an object, 
and without an object remains inert, or can never 
go beyond vague emotion. Love and friendship 
are either dead in the soul, or live there but an 
embryo life, until some opportunity of exercise, 
and so of development, is offered in the presenta- 
tion of appropriate objects. Even intellect must 
find its chief stimulus either in conflict or in asso- 



80 FA TMOS. 

ciation. All that a man is capable of becoming 
has reference, in one way or another, and more or 
less, to beings outside himself, who yet are in such 
relations to him as that upon them, or in some 
way with regard to them, his faculties and his 
tendencies may be exercised. 

Now piety, being a movement and action of 
human nature with reference to what is divine, 
demands for its only real existence and its only 
genuine development, a personal God, and a per- 
sonal God so revealed that the soul may have con- 
tact and communion with him ; may feel the power 
of his personality as it feels that of other person- 
alities. The love of nature cannot be piety. The 
vague worship of some infinite soul in nature, 
such as the pantheist dreams of, can never deserve 
the name of piety. The bare intellectual recog- 
nition of God as a real being, if it go no farther, 
can in no sense be termed godliness, nor serve 
any of its ends. Godliness is godZ/^^ness, and 
pre-supposes acquaintance and intercourse with a 
Person^ such as that in the contact of the one 
personality with the other, the one gains over the 
other some mysterious power that moulds it after 
its own image. That such contact and intercourse 
there mioht be, for this — added to all that was to 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 81 

be achieved in his suffering of death, the just for 
the unjust — for this God, in the person of his 
Son, became incarnate. Bj^ realizing in ourselves 
this beneJBt of the incarnation, by first receiving 
as a matter of faith that ''mystery," and then 
experimentally realizing it in our own personal 
being — thus do we become Christians. Godli- 
ness is the mystery of the incarnation made actual, 
palpable, openly manifest, in the experience of 
believing souls. 

Viewing the subject thus, we see what infinite 
reason there was for that form and method which 
the incarnation assumed. If to suffer in atone- 
ment for human sin had been its one purpose, it 
might have sufficed that our Lord should appear in 
the form of a mature man, and so soon as the fact 
of his coming should have become sufficiently pa- 
tent and notable, have yielded himself up to death. 
But when we realize that he came, also, to put 
himself in relation with every period and condi- 
tion of life, to create ties between himself and all 
human souls, to make it possible for any such 
soul, in any time, amidst any conceivable circum- 
stances and surroundings, to enter into that close 
personal relation with himself by means of which 

its own life should become filled with his life, and 

4 * 



82 PA TMOS. 

be changed into the same image, with grace upon 
grace, and from glory to glory, — when we think 
of all this, we see reasons why the life of Jesus 
was made, as we find it, from its beginning to its 
close, a complete human life, touching at some 
vital point every conceivable variety of human 
experience. 

But now, on the part of the Christian himself, 
what does all this involve and imply? If two 
beings are, even in that highly spiritual sense in 
which it is true of Christ and the redeemed soul, 
to become one, there must be on the part of both 
mutually responsive action. Two such beings 
can never enter into such union while one is pas- 
sive and the other alone is active. Passiveness, 
inertness, and the indifference which it implies, 
will itself repel. The two approach each other, 
and in a response of mutual attraction are drawn 
into spiritual oneness. In order to this there 
must be as many things as possible common to 
both. They cannot thus blend in spirit while in 
their sympathies, in their characteristic experi- 
ences, in the things they most desire and most 
seek, in their joy and their sorrow, their conflicts 
and overcomings, they live in spheres utterly dis- 
tinct. To satisfy this condition of a spiritual 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 83 

union with his people — the Lord, that he might 
become as the disciple, made that sphere in 
which the disciple must of necessity dwell, abso- 
lutely his own, and in that sphere became in so far 
as what is most essential to a real human life, all 
that a disciple is. Upon his own part, the disciple 
must respond to this, by receiving in himself his 
Lord's likeness, and consummate this new relation 
by submitting himself to and experiencing all that 
is necessary in himself to a perfect union. The 
Lord becomes as his disciple ; the disciple must 
be as his Lord. Each, in the way most appropri- 
ate and most needful, assumes the likeness of the 
other; until the disciple can truly say, ''For me 
to live is Christ." 

Li all this, now, the Lord's cup and the Lord's 
baptism, his cross in suffering, his self-denial and 
self-devotion in service, are most essential. These 
are not the mere accidents of Christian experience ; 
they are its necessary conditions. A Christian in 
this world having no part in what has a kindred 
and a likeness to that which in these respects was 
in Jesus, how can he be a Christian at all ? A 
Christian devoted to no service, bearing no cross, 
resisting and overcoming no tempter, suffering 
with patience no reproach, wholly unable to com- 



84 PA TMOS. 

prehend those strong figures of apostolical speech 
ill which we are said to be absolutely crucified 
with Christ — can such a thing be ? What the 
general condition, in this regard, shall involve for 
each one, cannot be anticipated. Much will de- 
pend upon that sphere in life to which each is 
providentially appointed. Doubtless, too, divine 
wisdom adjusts peculiarities of experience, as well 
as claims of duty, to peculiarities of natural char- 
acter and tendency, to capacity and fitness, so 
that for each the process of change into the Lord's 
likeness shall have an individuality and a suitable- 
ness worthy of a work so divine. This in general, 
however, may be always said, that the disciple 
must be as his Lord ; and he may be certain that 
he will find in all the varieties of position, sur- 
roundings, all the tests he must encounter, nothing 
in respect to which he can not appropriately ask 
himself, and make the answer a rule of action in 
each case, '' How would my Lord act here?" 

With these general thoughts before us, we may 
now, perhaps, with some profit, and with a view 
to illustrate what has been said, fix our attention 
upon these two of whom in former pages w^e have 
spoken, and study their mutual attitude and rela- 
tion with some care. It might seem, at first, as 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 85 

if it would answer the ends of such a study to 
select for the occasion of our observation of them 
that moment when John and Jesus stood, perhaps 
side by side, in the presence of the High Priest. 
It was a moment when the Lord was face to face 
with ignominy and with peril, and when the loy- 
alty of the disciple was severely tested, bearing 
the test victoriously. But in this case the dis- 
ciple was bearing no burden separately from that 
which his Lord bore, and was not so involved in 
the passing sc^ne but that he might be overlooked 
or disregarded. It was necessary that he should 
have his own arraignment, confront peril or shame 
properly his own, and be in circumstances where 
he could truly be said to bear his own cross to his 
own Calvary, before he could repeat in himself 
that which he had seen in Jesus. It was not in 
that scene in the High Priest's presence that John 
was to show how much the disciple had come to 
be as his Lord. It was in the course of a ministry 
of faithful, loving service, running on during 
years of vicissitude, occupied in toil in many 
lands, and supremely in the exile which he bore 
so patiently and which he turned to account in 
such transcendent service for his Lord — in this - 
that John was tried and proved. 



86 PA TMO<^. 

Tliree things, at least, are essential to that 
Christian development in which the disciple be- 
comes as his Lord. These are, responsibility^ op- 
portunity^ exigency. 

No man ever begins really to show what he is, 
or is in the way of what he may become, until he 
finds and takes up his own proper individual re- 
sponsibility. It is safe to say that to every one 
some such responsibility is appointed ; some re- 
sponsibility that belongs peculiarly to himself, 
and which he shares with no one whatever. It is 
pre-eminently true of a Christian. When the 
master of the vineyard hired his laborers in the 
morning and set them about the occupation of the 
day, he assigned to each his own work. Others 
might have a like work, but each would have his 
own, in respect to which he would be alone re- 
sponsible to him who had hired him. Under this 
figure our Lord represents the Christian laborer. 
Not that he would have us conceive of Christian 
work or responsibility as the work or responsibi- 
lity of a hireling ; but as in every parable there 
was some one point which he sought to impress, 
so in this one he teaches us that to become Chris- 
tians is to enter a vineyard where work must be 
done, and where we must each have his own. A 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD, 87 

Christian with tlie privilege of l)eing an idler, is 
an anomaly never seen in this vrorld. If there be 
idlers, as we fear there are many in Christ's church, 
they are so without permission, are so in the face 
of positive injunction ; and while they are thus 
idling, the responsibility of each lies untaken by 
any other, a reproach now, and if left unassumed 
to the last sure to become a swift witness, when 
he who said, '' Go worh to-day in my vineyard," 
shall come to take account of his laborers and to 
give them their wages. 

In this particular, too, the disciple finds that he 
is already even as his Lord. It is most affecting 
to observe what a consciousness of responsibility 
Jesus had. Very early he began to feel it : 
'^Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's 
business?" Constantly he bore it: "I must 
work while the day lasts." Ever the thought was 
before his mind — his mission, that which he had 
come to do. Not that he was a slave to it, or bore 
it as a burden. Great burdens his spirit felt, in- 
deed, but this was not one of them. This mission 
of his was '' the joy set before him," for the sake 
of which he " endured the cross, despising the 
shame." It was the baptism of which he said, 
'' How am I straightened till it be accomplished ? " 



8S PA TMOS, 

What an example of loyalty to a great idea do we 
see in him ! Of steady, unswerving loyalty, from 
which he turned aside never, in a momentary 
thought, never in the slightest impulse of feeling ! 
Likeness to him were impossible in one who had 
in his consciousness no responsibility, and in his 
life was having no occasion of loyalty to a trust. 
These occasions John found in the active ministry 
of his apostleship, and, as we have said, pre-emi- 
nently in what he bore of suffering for the dear 
Lord's sake near the end of his life. In these 
things his Christian purpose and action became 
positive and pronounced. As he stood with Jesus 
in the presence of the High Priest, what you can 
say of him is that he did not desert his Lord as 
the others had done. In his life of labor and of 
suffering for Jesus' sake, we see him going forth 
to seek the occasion of that suffering and that 
self-denial in which his Lord was to be glorified 
through him. Herein the disciple became as his 
Lord. Thus must the disciple ever become as his 
Lord. A negative Christianity has no seal of the 
Lord's image upon it. It is the positive that bears 
the stamp of the real. 

To Christian development, in right directions, 
opportunity is also essential. And here we have a 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 89 

clue to much of the providential ordering of a 
Christian man's life. Indeed, we may say the 
same of all life ; finding in incidental turnings, in 
unlooked for opportunities, each coming as a crisis, 
each holding ajar some new door opening upon a 
new theater of action with its results — in these 
finding a solution of many a life-problem. A long 
while ago, a young man, while divine service was 
in progress in some church in Pisa, Italy, had his 
attention called to one of the chandeliers which, 
agitated by the breeze that swept the room., 
swung backwards and forwards. Watching it 
carefully, he found by counting his pulse that its 
oscillations were made in the same time, whether 
the arc through which it passed was larger or 
smaller. Out of this incident grew the invention 
of the pendulum, and so all those expedients for 
the measurement of time which, both by sea and 
land, are now found so indispensable. This was 
one of the young Galileo's opportunities. 

Just about one hundred years ago, a young 
German, walking along the sands of the Lido, at 
Venice, saw lying there the fragment of a sheep's 
skull. Something in the appearance of it struck 
his attention. Taking it in his hand he began ex- 
amining it, and the result was the discovery, so 



90 FA TMOS. 

important in anatomy, that the skull of the ani- 
mal is but a continuation of the spinal column, 
with its vertebrae so altered as to provide for the 
new uses. The same thoughtful observer, while 
in Padua, was looking one day at a fan-palm. He 
began studying its structure, and ended in ascer- 
taining how the type of all vegetable growth is 
the leaf, assuming all varieties of form,' from the 
stamen of the flower to the magnificent oak, pro- 
duct of a thousand years. These trifling incidents 
were Goethe's opportunities, and were among the 
occasions which crowned the poet's brow with 
laurels of science scarcely less luxuriant and en- 
during than those of his undying song. 

Such things can not be mere contingencies. 
Least of all can such things come as pure contin- 
gencies to one who habitually commits himself to 
God for guidance, and acknowledges him in all 
his ways. And Christian life, in this respect, is 
like life in all its other phases. The secret of 
Christian growth and usefulness, like the secret 
of success in any other sphere, is simply in im- 
proved opportunity. Failure is a result either of 
blindness which does not see the flt occasion, or 
slowness which is never ready till the fit occasion 
has passed by. Wisdom's final word to the lost 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 91 

soul, ere she parts from it forever, is, '' I called, 
and ye refused." The mourning words of Jesus, 
as he wept over Jerusalem, were, '' If thou hadst 
known, even thou, in this thy day^ the things that 
belong unto thy peace ! " To remove the candle- 
stick of the negligent church is to take away its 
opportunity ; while for each Christian the reason 
for the great injunction to ''Watch!" is, that 
only to the watchful, observant eye, does either 
opportunity or danger stand revealed. 

To Jesus opportunity was the handmaid of 
duty. It met him every where and was always 
welcome. What a complete and finished life 
his became, just because of this. At the end of 
that wonderful three years' ministry, the most 
searching eye, in looking back through it, would 
have failed to discover a single instance in which 
an opportunity had been missed, or had failed to 
be perfectly improved. And the grandest of these 
opportunities came in the form of supremest trial. 
Simon Peter would have held back the beloved 
Master from that last journey to Jerusalem, the 
end of which was to be betrayal and death. To 
the Master himself the greater the suffering the 
more it drew him with attractions irresistible. For 
it was when his soul should be made an offering 



92 PA TMOS, 

for sin that lie was to see of the travail of his soul 
and be satisfied. What a loss to the beloved dis- 
ciple Avoiild it have been, if there had been for him 
no Patmos, Avith its exile, and its toil in the dismal 
mines, its pain of longing for Christian society, its 
dread of worse persecution in reserve ; but also 
with its glorious visions, and its opportunity to 
hold up before the church of the ages the mirror 
of its grand destiny. Often, to us, what we shrink 
from is what if we knew it we have most reason 
to desire. The heavy shower which bends the 
tall lily till its splendid blossom touches the ground 
and is stained by the contact, is just that which 
feeds the sources of life at its roots, and when 
again the queenly form stands erect, it is with new 
vigor in all its fibers and a fresh bloom upon its glow- 
ing petals. Let Christians be careful not to misin- 
terpret this feature of human life. They may lose 
where they imagine gain, and find great gain in 
what seems to them only loss and calamity. To 
have found an excuse for evading a trying duty 
may seem to them a good fortune. How can they 
tell what most precious opportunity they may have 
missed meanwhile ? To have suffered bereave- 
ment, worldly loss, reproach, persecution, may 
seem to them pure hardship, and they may won- 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 98 

der why tliey should suffer and others escape. But 
when they find and gather the peaceable fruits of 
righteousness as a result of all, will they not be 
glad ? Let the disciple rejoice to be as his Lord 
in both particulars. '' Ye are they," he says to all 
such, '^ who have been with me in my tempta- 
tions, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my 
Father hath appointed unto me." 

*' Striving in coward listlessness 
Each good work still to shun, 
How can a Father's sanction bless 
Our labors ne'er begun ? 

"Go boldly up — each hindrance meet — 
Assail that nearest by ; 
When duty calls, to bear defeat 
Is better than to fly. 

'* How knows't thou but the occasion rare 
This very hour supplies ? 
A victim struggles in the snare ; 
A brother captive lies. 

" He who the search unwearied keeps, 
With fervent, zealous mind, 
May rescue some ; but he who sleeps, 
Surely no souls shall find. 

" If it be sweet, when day is past, — 
Though not increased thy store, — 
To think, not to th' endeavor lost 
Its fruitless moments were : 



94 PA TAfOS. 

" How sweelcr far will be at length, 
As wanes life's setting sun, 
The thought to Christ was given its strength, 
Though naught but heaven be w^on ! " 

Exigency may come to men in either one of its 
two principal forms — either as Danger or as Diffi- 
culty. There may be those who wonder, some- 
times, that in all life there should be so much of 
each of these as we find there ; and there may be 
others who would account for the fact purely as 
among the contingencies by which, in the view of 
their philosophy, all life is beset. But this would 
be to rule out of the question both Providence and 
providential design and use. It is a truer philos- 
ophy, while it is less atheistical, to say that the exi- 
gencies which come to men in forms of danger 
or difficulty, fill a place in that scheme of instru- 
mentalities by which character is matured and life 
is made noble. And there seems to be, as things 
are, a necessity for them. Imagine Joseph as 
growing up to manhood amidst the same scenes 
where his boyhood was passed ; escaping slavery, 
imprisonment, long and painful separation from 
those he loved, the cares of a kingdom, the temp- 
tations and perils of a court, yet just for that very 
reason missing all that in facing the exigencies ap- 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 95 

pointed him lie gained, dying with the lesourees 
of character and intellect with which he was so 
richly endowed, wholly undeveloped ! It is easy 
to imagine it. We have but to suppose that Jacob 
had changed his mind on that eventful morning 
after determining to send him forth in search of his 
brethren. We have but to bring Reuben back, after 
Joseph had been thrown into the pit, in season to 
deliver him and send him to his father. It was no 
iron necessity in the connection of events that tore 
the lad from the arms that cherished him so ten- 
derly, and sent him alone into that tremendous 
battle with temptation, and hardship, and every 
most testing vicissitude. He himself understood 
it best, when years after, in Egypt, he expounded 
to his brethren the underlying significance of that 
which they, indeed, had reason enough to regret, 
but which for all that had a divine meaning in it 
— '' Grod did send me.'^ Egypt, the house of Pot- 
iphar, the prison, the palace of Pharaoh, the slavery 
in which he began, the dignity in which he ended, 
were Joseph's school, and it was just there and 
thus — no w^here else and in no other way — that 
he could become the man he was. 

Human life must have these ordeals if human 
character is to be wrought into the grand and 



96 PA TMOS. 

noble forms of Avliich it is cajoable. For virtue in 
men, strength, purity, excellence, as human na- 
ture now is, are not spontaneous growths. In the 
angelic nature they probably are. In man as an 
unfallen being, had he remained such, they might 
have been, although it would seem that even to 
him the ordeal of temptation was in some sort a 
necessity, while his great misfortune was, and ours 
as well, that in that ordeal he so bitterly failed. 
But with all his children the necessity is manifest 
and inexorable. A nature untried is a nature 
undeveloped ; it has possibilities but no actuali- 
ties ; latent power but no effective strength ; it 
may be susceptible of many things, but really 
acquires nothing. Every soul in this world that 
has ever attained to virtue has fought its way 
thither, while all other prizes are won upon a like 
field of battle. It is one of the wonderful things 
in our Saviour's incarnation, that he seems, in some 
sort, to have submitted himself to the same neces- 
sity. That forty days in the wilderness, with the 
temptations that took such infernal advantage of 
the solitude and the fasting — what shall we say 
of them ? They are so typical of all human ex- 
perience, in the warfare of soul with sense, and 
innocence with guilt, that they seem to partake 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 97 

esseiitiallj' of the nature of such experience. In- 
deed we are pointedly told that Jesus was '' temp- 
ted in all points like as we are." AVe will not say 
how far his human nature needed disciplines such 
as are essential to ours ; we know, at least, that 
he submitted to them, and has left it as a lesson 
to be pondered that even a nature such as his 
could not fulfill its allotted task in this world on 
any other terms than those of battle and victory. 
Every disciple is as his Lord in this respect ; 
happy for him, if he is as his Lord, too, in meet- 
ing the exigency so as to come forth of it con- 
quering and crowned. 

The sad and perilous side of human life is 
exactly this. Not that the trial is to be lamented, 
but that the record of human trial is so much a 
record of failure and defeat. Is it not some sense of 
this that has inspired even many of the wild fictions 
of superstitious times and races ? The German poet 
Burger has embodied in his vigorous verse one of 
these, the burden of which we may translate from 
the French of Madame de Stael : 

'' Followed by his servants and his numerous 
pack of hounds, a hunter sets out for the chase on 
Sunday, just as the bells of the village are an- 
nouncing the hour of divine service. A knight in 
5 



98 PA TMOS. 

white armor meets him and conjures him not to 
profane the day of the Lord ; another knight in 
black armor af)pears also and bids him be ashamed 
to yield to prejudices which befit only old men 
and children. The hunter yields to these evil 
suggestions ; he passes on, and arrives soon at the 
field of a poor widow. She throws herself at his 
feet and beseeches him not to destroy her harvest 
by trampling it under the feet of the horses. The 
knight in white armor entreats him to be pitiful ; 
the black knight laughs to scorn the puerile senti- 
ment. The hunter mistakes ferocity for energj^ 
and his horses crush beneath their feet the hope 
of the poor and orphaned. Finally, the stag 
which they have roused takes refuge in the hut of 
an old hermit. The hunter wishes to set fire to 
the poor dwelling in order to drive out the game. 
The hermit embraces his knees, he tries to soften 
tlie fierce intruder who threatens ruin to his poor 
dwelling. The good genius appears and pleads 
for the last time, in the form of the same knight 
in white armor ; the evil genius appears also un- 
der that of the black knight, and once more tri- 
umphs. The hunter kills the hermit, and imme- 
diately is changed into a phantom whom his own 
dogs set upon and pursue. It is said that at mid- 



THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 99 

night, in certain seasons of the year, one can see 
above the forest where this somber scene trans- 
pired, a hunter in the clouds, pursued till the day 
dawns by his furious dogs." 

Many a career that has rushed swiftly on to 
ruin began in the breach of some ordinance of 
God too often lightly esteemed, like that which 
enjoins that the Sabbath be kept holy, and then 
from stage to stage ruled by the same inauspicious 
influences, pursued its way from bad to worse, till 
suddenly cut short in destruction. There is a 
touch, too, in this wild legend, of the keen sense 
even a rude people may have of those links of 
moral causation which connect the beginning of 
crime with its end. When the hunter turned his 
back, on that Sabbath morning, upon the house of 
God, and made himself deaf to the melodious 
summons that called him back from the profane 
sport he contemplated, there was in his action 
a sad presage of what finally came. To have 
spurned away the restraints of religion, is to be 
already in the toils of the tempter. 

These are the exigencies that chiefly try men. 
The Christian is by no means free of them because 
he is a Christian. They may beset him all the 
more for that very reason. In these as in all 



100 PA TMOS. 

others ; in the danger and in the difficnlty of his 
way through life, he needs to keep before him the 
example of him who trod a like path, but trod it 
triumphantly, so that of him it could be said that 
though he was '' tempted in all points like as we 
are," he was ''without sin." 

"• Grant," said the mother of the sons of Zebe- 
dee, "grant that these my two sons may sit, the 
one upon thy right hand and the other upon thy 
left hand, in thy kingdom." It could not be 
granted them, in the sense she meant it, but they 
have received it, all the same. It was prepared 
for them of the Father, as it is also prepared for 
all the true followers of the Lord. Having over- 
come he has sat down with his Father on his 
throne ; overcoming in like manner, they sit down 
with him there. '' As thou. Father, art in me, 
and I in thee, that they may be one in us." 
" The glory which thou gavest me, I have given 
them, that they may be one, as we are." It is 
not alone in suffering or serving that the disciple 
is as his Lord. That which he receives from the 
Father he gives to them ; when they see him as he 
is they become like him, and themselves sons of 
God, are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with him 
who, though their King, is yet their Elder Brother. 



IV. 

FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING. 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING. 

Among those narratives, half history, half 
legend, which have come down to us from primi- 
tive Christian times, those connected with the 
name of Columba, or Columkill, tlie Irish saint 
and missionary, are especially picturesque. Some 
contest had arisen amongst the Irish clans with 
whom Columba lived, and to whom he had 
preached the Gospel — said to be for the posses- 
sion of a certain copy of the Psalms — in which 
having taken the weaker side, he suffered the 
consequence so usual in those times ; he was 
excommunicated, and compelled to leave the 
island. The vessel in which, with twelve com- 
panions, he sailed away from the Irish coast, 
brought him to a little isle near the western shore 
of Scotland, some three miles to the south of 
Staffa, celebrated for the noble caves, with one of 
which the name of the hero, Fingal, is associated. 
Landing upon the white sandy beach, in a little 
bay formed by contiguous islets, they made this 
island their home, and here Columba built a church 

103 



104 PA TMOS. 

and a monastery, and with the community of 
monks which he in due time gathered, spent the 
remainder of his Kfe in self-chastening, and in 
various works of Christian service, chiefly mis- 
sionary labors among the Picts of Scotland. From 
his lips and those of his monks Scotland first re- 
ceived the Gospel. 

To Columba his native Ireland was very dear. 
In choosing among the islands which gem that 
northern sea, he was at particular pains to select 
one from which the Irish coast could not be seen, 
lest the view of the shore he had left should be a 
temptation stronger than he could bear. Over- 
hanging the bay where he had landed was a rocky 
hill. Ascending this, he looked away to the west- 
ward, to see if any portion of Ireland was in sight. 
Nothing appeared to his vision but sky and sea. 
Calling the eminence by a Celtic name which 
means, '^ The Hill with the Back turned on Ire- 
land," he descended, and joining his companions, 
announced to them his purpose to live and die in 
lona. 

There are some things in Columba which re- 
mind us of the Apostle to whom in the foregoing 
Images we have so often had occasion to refer, 
lona, though in some sense a place of exile, was 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING. 105 

still by no means a ralmos ; and yet, the spirit 
and the career of him who made it his abode were 
not unlike those of the Beloved Disciple. He was, 
himself, indeed, a beloved disciple, and among the 
primitive churches of Scotland his memory was 
cherished with a love much resembling that which 
the churches of Asia had for John. Such a love 
was felt for him even in Ireland, at least by many 
of those who had been led by him into the mar- 
vellous light. It is related that after the ban of 
excommunication had been pronounced upon him 
in the Irish council that condemned him, as he 
Came into the assembly he was met by a member 
of the body, Saint Brendan, who tenderly em- 
braced him. To the exclamations of horror which 
burst from the council, that he should give the 
kiss of peace to an excommunicated man, Brendan 
replied, " You would do as I have done ; and you 
would never have excommunicated him, if you had 
seen Avhat I see — a pillar of fire before, and the an- 
gels of heaven beside him. I dare not disdain one 
predestined by God to be the guide of an entire 
people to eternal life." 

Perhaps the most significant and characteristic 
scene in all that is related of Columba was that in 
which, having ascertained that the tempting shores 



106 PA TMOS. 

of liis native island wcrc^ no longer in view, not 
even from the highest point of tliat where he had 
come to seek another home, he called the spot by 
a name which made it a monument of his purpose 
thenceforth to be indeed a pilgrim and a sojourner 
in the earth — '' Tlie mil with the Back turned on 
Ireland.^'' The spirit of self-devotement is most 
essential, in such a mission as was his ; it is essen- 
tial always, and happy is that Christian who has 
finally turned his back upon all that could allure 
him from that new and nobler calling wherewith 
he has been called. 

The thought now before us is in some degree the 
resuming of that which we dropped at the conclu- 
sion of the last chapter. It is, however, with a 
different phase of it that we are at present con- 
cerned. We spoke there of renemhlance to Christ 
in the particulars of which special mention was 
made : resemblance in a broad sense, covering all 
that most characterized the Lord in his incarna- 
tion, and must also characterize the disciple who 
would be as his Lord. Besides likeness to him, 
however, there is to hefellotvship; and fellowship, 
while it implies likeness and sympathy, is still 
something more than either or both. 

The Greek word, in the New Testament, which 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING, 107 

is translated ''fellowship," lias a peculiarly strong 
signification. It indicates a partaking by one of 
that which belongs to another, such as that the 
possession becomes common to both. It signifies, 
also, intercourse and association with each other 
in respect to this which thus becomes the basis or 
ground of fellowship. It implies, therefore, a pe- 
culiar intimacy of relation between the parties, 
and pre-supposes an experience which goes quite 
beyond mere sympathj^ with each other, or even 
resemblance to each other, though it should be in 
respect to the same things of which fellowship is 
averred. We deal here with this peculiar fact in 
one especial phase of it ; that which is brought 
before us in the apostolical expression. '' the fel- 
lowship of his sufferings." 

There are two tendencies in human nature, op- 
posite in character yet working to a like result as 
regards all that class of experiences which we in- 
clude under the term "- suffering." One is the 
Stoic tendency ; the other the Epicurean. These 
two forms of ancient philosophy were not alto- 
gether an invention, they were more a growth, 
out of the natural tendencies of human minds and 
hearts. In this lay their power over successive 
generations, and in this we find that principle of 



108 PATHOS. 

perpetuity which kept them alive while many 
things else perished, and substantially the same 
while so many other things were changing. To 
very many, both of Greeks and Romans, they sup- 
plied the only religion they really possessed, and 
to this day they are the lurking spirit in much 
which men say and feel. To bear with simple 
fortitude what is to be borne ; to escape, as much 
as possible, all burden, and forget in every way 
we can that there is any such thing as sorrow in 
life — toward one or the other of these refuges we 
naturally turn. Too much we make these our re- 
sort even after we become Christians, and while 
professing faith^ turn, really, for relief, to philoso- 
phy. Embracing, then, under the idea of suffering 
all that is to be encountered in ordinary experi- 
ence, in our intercourse as Christians with the 
world, in self-denial and cross-bearing for Jesus' 
sake, in all that characterizes the Christian condi- 
tion as one of trial and probation, what must be 
true of one who enters really into that noble fel- 
lowship — the fellowship of suffering ? 

A contrasted instance may bring us more surely 
to the point of view in which we would place the 
answer to this question. About sixty years before 
Christ, died T. Pomponius Atticus, the friend of 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING. 109 

Cicero, of Brutus and Agrippa. He died, at the 
age of seventy-seven, of voluntary starvation. 
There has rarely lived in this world a man who 
made a more discreet use of worldly maxims, or 
who in so doing realized at once so much and so 
little. A man of amiable temper, of refined tastes, 
inheriting wealth and adding very largely to his 
inheritance by his own well-directed enterprises, 
a literary man and the friend and correspondent 
of the most shining scholars and statesmen of 
Rome, he at the same time discreetly held himself 
aloof, all his life long, from political strifes, and 
choosing his friends among all parties, contrived 
to maintain agreeable relations with all. Even 
when, in his earlier life, through the jealousy of 
one of the factions, he was for some years ban- 
ished the city, it was his good fortune to pass this 
interval in that other city, Athens, which to a 
man of his tastes afforded a residence scarcely less 
acceptable than Rome itself. He was, with this 
exception, one of those of whom all men speak 
well ; and up to the time when, at the age of 
nearly fourscore, he was smitten by an incurable 
disease, his life had been a course of almost un- 
broken prosperit)^ When a trouble came, how- 
ever, which no art could elude, he starved himself 



110 PATMOS. 

to death, as the only resource which his philoso- 
phy could suggest. 

In tlie eyes of liis contemporaries this was a 
wise and a manly act. It was more than half a 
century later, that a new thought concerning 
these ills to which flesh is heir was born into the 
world. On no one point, perhaps, did the Chris- 
tian and the heathen idea stand in more marked 
contrast. And the heathen idea was simply that 
which worldly Avisdom suggests : the Christian 
one came by divine revelation, and embodied it- 
self in him whose visage was more marred than any 
man's, yet who alone of all who have suffered in 
this world, never once entertained even a complain- 
ing thought. It is no small part of the service 
expected of a Christian that in this particular he 
be found even as his Lord. Perhaps skeptical 
observers are never more ready to quote the ex- 
ample of Christians against their profession, than 
when they see them impatient, complaining, fret- 
ful under the appointed burden, be it heavy or 
light. It is a suggestion of even unsanctified 
reason that one with so many sources of consola- 
tion as a Christian has, if his religion be true, and 
his own experience of it real, sins against his own 
privilege, and discredits his own faith, if to him 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING. Ill 

sorrow, and difficulty, and burden-bearing, and 
annoyance and the thousand crosses of life, are 
just what they are to others. Too often there is 
on the Christian's brow a gloom of discontent, of 
Avhich even the man of the world would be 
ashamed. Too often one who in action may sel- 
dom fail, in simple endurance breaks down alto- 
gether. So it was not without reason that the 
apostle so emphasized the injunction : '• Wherefore 
lift up the hands that hang down, and the feeble 
knees ;" or as addressed to another group of those 
who had hardness to endure as soldiers of Jesus 
Christ, '' Rejoice in the Lord always ; and again I 
say^ rejoice.''' 

But let us take particular note of the fact that 
suffering, in the broad view of it, embraces very 
much more than is ordinarily included under the 
term. We generally mean by it some such sense 
of positive pain, either bodily or mental, as induces 
anguish. Properly viewed, it embraces all that 
in the human condition in this world which be- 
comes the occasion of trial. So viewed it would 
include the self-denials incident to Christian life ; 
the toil, and weariness, whether of body or mind, 
found in Christian service ; the temptations grow- 
ing peculiarly out of our Christian position, as 



112 PATMOS. 

well as those incident to humanity in general — in 
short, whatever there is to endure in tliis world, 
and whatever there is to do, provided the endur- 
ing or the doing taxes, tests, or tries us in any way. 
Now, we may say of all this that it constitutes 
a fellowship the noblest and grandest this world 
knows. It is within the sphere of this fellowship 
that Ave find all the heroism celebrated in history. 
Heroism is not simply achieving ; it is achieving 
under conditions which give occasion for and ex- 
ercise those elements of character which are most 
manly and most noble. Everj^ heroic soul has 
been a suffering soul. Hero and martyr are al- 
most synonyms. How differently one speaks who 
enters into this fellowship from one who avoids it, 
may be seen by comparing the Psalms of David, 
on the one hand, with the Ecclesiastes of Solomon, 
on the other. The royal singer had almost infi- 
nitely more to endure than his son, the melancholy 
moralizer. Yet David's strain, however there 
may mingle with it from time to time the note of 
agony, is upon the whole a strain of triumph from 
beginning to end. All the energies of a great 
soul are roused to meet great trials and to grapple 
with great difficulties ; and through all his errors, 
defeats, depressions, and sins even, we track its 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING, 113 

course by the trophies it rears, and hear its trum- 
pet call, of challenge or of victory, to the very 
last. Solomon, amidst the perfect peace which 
his father had conquered for him, surrounded by 
the splendors of which his father had paid the first 
and heaviest cost, lapped in luxury and lulled 
with song, sees only sorrow and vexation in all 
things, and wearies us out with the changes he 
rings upon the theme, '' Vanity of vanities." One 
can readily see how it is that for the sake of this 
contrast inspiration has in fact made use of the one 
of these as its instrument equally as the other ; so 
that the world may have before it, to the end of 
time, this signal illustration of the fact that it is 
not in possessing and enjoying, but in foregoing, 
enduring and achieving that its o^yn noblest 
spirits enter into fellowship. 

But let us come closer to the main thought with 
which we deal. What is this fellowship, after all, 
and how do we enter into it ? Not simply, let us 
say, by enduring the same things, but by enduring 
them with that same spirit which, as seen in great 
examples, and especially in the greatest of all, we 
find so admirable. There is, it would seem, ac- 
cording to what we find in Paul's representation 
of this matter, a sense in which we may have fel- 



114 PA TMOS. 

lowship with Christ, even in that aspect and 
sphere of his sufferings which is highest and most 
divine. That is a very remarkable expression of 
this apostle, '' I am crucified with Christ.'' Nor 
less so is that other, before quoted, where he 
yearns to know the fellowship of his Lord's suf- 
ferings, '' and to he made conformable unto hin 
death,^'' This must mean more than simply faith 
in the efficacy of Christ's sufferings, clear appre- 
hension of the purpose of them, and a resting 
in them such as to fully meet the condition of 
participation in their benefit. He must imply 
that he enters, in his own deepest experience, in 
the sense which he has of his sins, and the manner 
in which he gives them over to the utter condem- 
nation which they deserve, into the whole purpose 
and meaning of Christ's death in this regard ; 
thoroughly hating his sins, utterly condemning 
them in his own conscience and judgment, and 
consenting, with his whole heart and soul, to that 
view of their enormity which explains and pleads 
for so great an atonement as Jesus made. 

Even in this respect it is possible for us, and is 
required of us to have fellowship with the suffer- 
ing Saviour. That view of sin Avhich he liad, we 
ourselves in our degree accept also ; the perfect 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING. 115 

righteousness of the law which condemns them we 
recognize, and to that testimonial to the law's holi- 
ness and its infinite value to the universe which 
Jesus gave, when to preserve it inviolate, in the 
act of mercy he yielded up his life in support of 
its sanctions, we respond in a sorrow for sin, a 
loathing of it and complete turning away from it, 
which is now the only atonement loe can make. 
Into this fellowship we enter as penitent sinners, 
and in it we need to continually abide. For as the 
solicitations of sin are unremitted during our whole 
life below, we are prepared to resist them success- 
fully only as we see them as Jesus saw them, and 
in utter condemnation of all sin, nail it to his 
cross. Gethsemane must not be to us a mystery 
and a wonder merely. We must enter there with 
our Lord, and in the sorrow and penitence of our 
soul there must be some real response to the agony 
of his. 

Then, also, in that which is necessary to the full 
accomplishment of our Lord's redeeming work. 
There is a striking analogy between the condi- 
tions of that progress which the Gospel is making 
in the world, or has ever made, and those which 
accompanied its first establishment here, as a 
scheme of saving grace. Those words of Jesus to 



116 PA TMOS. 

John and James, might be taken as addressed to 
all who have had a part, and all who ever will 
have a part in pushing on to its consummation 
that enterprise of redemption winch he himself 
inaugurated in his death ; '' Ye shall indeed drink 
of my cup." It was a saying whose truthful logic 
all ages since have demonstrated, — that when he 
said : " If they have called the master of the house 
Beelzebub, how much more they of his household ; 
if they have persecuted me, they will persecute 
you." What would the church of Jesus in this 
world have done without the spirit of Jesus ? 
without that felloAvship of his sufferings which 
has prepared it to be in the world his representa- 
tive in this also — to be despised and rejected, to 
be crucified and buried : always with the same 
certainty of speedy resurrection ? Where would 
have been all those faithful testimonies for Jesus 
in dark and perilous times ; all those unflinching 
advocacies of his truth in the face of a gainsay- 
ing, mocking and threatening world ; where would 
have been our reformations, and great revivals, 
and missionary enterprises ; how could the wil- 
derness and the solitary place have ever been 
made glad, or the desert to blossom as the rose, if 
there had been in the church no fellowship of the 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING. 117 

sufferings of its Lord ? And always we find that 
the Christian heart has got on fire just by contact, 
thus, with the heart of Jesus. Always, Christi- 
anity has been pure, strong, apostolic, world- 
embracing in its spirit, self-sacrificing and noble, 
just in proportion as it has caught the contagion 
of that in him which for the joy that was set be- 
fore him, made him endure the cross, despising the 
shame. O what a mighty thing, during these 
eighteen centuries and more of history, has been 
this fellowship of the sufferings of Jesus I 

From this center, really, proceed those manifes- 
tations of the patient, steadfast, always-abounding 
spirit, which as seen in various relations, whether 
in times past or time present, we find so engaging. 
It is true that mere manhood, apart from any dis- 
tinctively Christian element in it, often commands 
our admiration. We admire the chivalrous in 
character, even when its inspiration is simply per- 
sonal honor, reverence for virtue and pity for the 
weak and suffering. The ideal knighthood of 
feudal times supplies a noble figure in the histori- 
cal picture of that period ; but we always pause 
with highest admiration before a portrait like that 
which is given of Godfrey of Bouillon ; '* a reli- 
gious man, clement, pious, and fearing God ; just, 



118 PATHOS. 

departing from all evil ; grave, and firm in word ; 
despising the vanities of the age, which in his time 
of life, and especially in the military profession, is 
a rare virtue ; assiduous in prayer and in works 
of piety ; remarkable for liberality, gracious with 
affability, kind and merciful ; in all his ways com- 
mendable and pleasing to God.''* The most 
knightly and truly noble figure in these modern 
times is that of Washington, the crown of whose 
virtues was his reverence for religion and his fear 
of God. Few men have entered in so grand a sense 
into this fellowship of which we speak. We are 
very apt to think of him as commanding from his 
contemporaries all the admiration which posterity 
has lavished upon him, and can scarcely conceive, 
in his case, of hostile criticism, of detraction, and 
the wavering of the public confidence. Yet of 
these he had perhaps as large a share as often falls 
to the lot of any man, in whatever station ; was the 
victim of as cruel misconstructions ; was plotted 
against and schemed against; — in Congress, in 
the army, in his own military family, among those 
whom he loved and trusted most. He was assailed 
in newspapers, was slandered in j)i^ivate letters. 
He was traduced, at home and abroad. And the 

* Broad Stone of Honor. 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING, 119 

exigencies of the service required that he should 
bear it all in silence. When his army had been 
reduced to a few ragged, half-starved regiments, 
he was obliged to let the statement go unanswered, 
of those who sought to do him injury, that he was 
strong enough, if only he were courageous enough, 
to overpower the foe and drive him from the land, 
because in the impression that foe had of his 
strength lay the only protection for his real weak- 
ness. He was obliged to keep silence when tra- 
duced, lest the country should learn too much of 
these secret dissensions, and be itself disheartened. 
It was not in the field that the manhood of this 
true man was most severely tested, but in the 
privacy of his own bitter, desponding thoughts. 
The strength and courage most needed by him 
was what should nerve him to suffer and be pa- 
tient. The courage and the strength required for 
open battle could gather inspiration from many 
sources ; this other from only one. At the same 
time, fully as much depended upon the result of 
what was thus secret as of that which was more 
open, and Americans to-day have as much reason 
to be thankful that Washington was a man who 
could suffer and be silent, as that he was a man 
who could lead an army and found a nation. A 



120 PA TMOS. 

native nobleness of soul lie had, no doubt; yet 
that he feared God, was a praying man and a 
Christian, is the true reason of all. 

TJie mention of this example reminds us of a 
spliere in which there is great demand for the cul- 
tivation of this quality of Christian patience and 
forbearance, this cheerful participation in the fel- 
lowsliip of suffering. Religion suffers much from 
the effects of that irritable self-love, that sensitive- 
ness under even very ordinary and innocent dif- 
ferences of opinion, and those alienations and 
collisions hence and otherwise originating, which 
so often disturb Christian intercourse, and even at 
times break out in open rupture and disgraceful 
contention. The word of Jesus Avas most true when 
lie said, ''It must needs be that offenses come." 
Even in the sense, perhaps, only remotely contem- 
plated by him they must needs come. Human 
l)eings in all relations have much to bear from 
each other. Whether wdth or without intention, 
intercourse must be expected to imply more or 
less of collision ; sensitiveness will be wounded, 
interests crossed, cherished opinions or preposses- 
sion assailed. The only possible terms upon which 
there can be any human intercourse at all, is the 
recognition beforehand of this fact, and such an 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING, 121 

adjustment of oneself to it, as that every little 
spark of difference shall not be suffered to kindle 
a '' great matter" of debate and strife. 

It would almost seem as if in the church relation 
most of this tendency is realized Avith least of an- 
ticipatory provision against it. One is tempted to 
say that each member of the church holds every 
member save himself under obligation to be a per- 
fect Christian ; with unlimited title to forbearance 
in his own faults, while under no obligation to show 
a like forbearance towards the faults of others. 
While recognizing the claims of that noble fellow- 
ship of suffering of which we speak, it seems to 
be forgotten that perhaps its purest and best form 
will be in that charity which ^' suffer eth long and is 
kind:" which '' thinketh no evil," which ''doth 
not behave itself unseemly" under any provoca- 
tion. A Christian may bear with very much of 
his Lord's own spirit '' the contradictions of sin- 
ners against himself," yet become soon impatient 
at those far milder and gentler ones which he en- 
counters amongst his own brethren. How soon 
would the gainsaying world lose its favorite argu- 
ment of reproach, if the spirit of mutual forbear- 
ance should so possess the various communities of 
Christians as to put an end once for all to those 
6 



122 PA TMOS, 

jars, and discords, and intestine Avars by which 
sometimes churches ai'e even torn into shreds I 
Jesus had much to suffer in the faults, the igno- 
rances, the defection even of those who loved and 
followed him. No question of his love for them 
ever arose or could arise ; it w^as only if they, in 
spite of all, loved him. It was not to him, but hy 
him, that the question was addressed, '' Lovest 
thou me ?" Can we not so enter into the fellow- 
ship of this spirit as that our love for each other 
shall abide in some degree as his did, and " for- 
bearing one another in" this " love," can we not 
learn better to '' keep the unity of the Spirit in 
the bond of peace ? " What a great day for the 
church if ever in this sense it shall universally 
enter into the fellowship of its Lord's sufferings ! 

This of which we have been speaking, through- 
out, is in point of fact the basis of all human fel- 
lowship, and pre-eminently of that which exists 
amongst Christians, and which brings them into 
proper relations, as Christians, with that world 
which is their field. Every close and intimate 
relation amongst human beings implies the fellow- 
ship of suffering as the principle and the root out 
of which it springs and by which it lives. The 
marriage relation, for example, would far less fre- 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING, 123 

quently be a mistake and a disappointment if this 
were realized. Entered upon in a flush of eager 
anticipation as what shall realize a rosy dream, 
reduce to substance and to fact a vision all bril- 
liant with creations of fancy and of hope, it is 
found to be at bottom a fellowship of burden- 
bearing, of mutual consideration and mutual help, 
having all its deeper sources of joy down in the 
somber valleys of sorrow, and toil, and suffering. 
Unprepared for such a discovery, unwilling to re- 
cognize it even when made, too many rebel at the 
hard fact, and refusing to seek the real blessing 
of this relation where it is to be found, seek it 
where it never can be found, and of course are 
disappointed. 

The fundamental fact in all human life, that to 
which all other facts must conform and adjust 
themselves, is that of human suffering. When 
men began to sin they began to suffer, and the 
suffering has ever since been a fact as radical and 
universal as that of the sinning. Whatever the- 
ory of life or of life's relations proceeds upon the 
hypothesis that while the sin is a misfortune, sim- 
ply, the suffering is only a mistake, is essentially 
superficial and misleading. All human relations are 
divine expedients for sharing and so rendering more 



124 PATMOS, 

tolerable human burdens, and for enabling human 
beings first of all to help one another. And so to 
him who comes to create in the world spiritual 
fellowship, and to sanctify and consecrate all those 
fellowships which originate in nature and in the 
ordinary needs and tendencies of human life, the 
name of ^' The Comforter^'''' the Helper, was given. 
When an apostle would sum up in a single pre- 
cept all the uses to which those grand revelations 
w^hich he had been commissioned to announce 
were to be put, he said, '' Wherefore, comfort one 
another with these words." 

So, when a Christian enters into fellowship with 
those who are of like faith and hope with himself, 
he finds in them those who have weaknesses, temp- 
tations, sorrows, faults, burdens, all which sum- 
mon him to continually remember that between 
him and them there is a likeness, and should be 
sympathy. When he looks out on the world, he 
sees the multitude of careless ones all deluded by 
the same deceptions which once led him astray, 
all made wretched by the same causes from which 
his new life in Christ has opened to himself the 
only way of escape, and hastening on to that 
worse wretchedness which is the inflexible final 
consequence of incorrigible sin. As Jesus entered 



FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING. 125 

into the fellowship of the doomed city's sufferings, 
and with prophetic tears partook the swiftly-com- 
ing woe, so does. Christian pity bring close home 
to the heart the condition of those who, as yet 
thoughtless, are ''ready to perisli." The sad 
state of the heathen world is seen, not as a mere 
picture, or as a condition with which his own na- 
tural state has no affinity ; but these are brethren, 
sharing Avith him a common heritage, gathering 
bitter fruit from the same trees of Sodom, threat- 
ened with the thunders of the law all have broken, 
and which, while in its obligation it encircles the 
world, in its penalty smites the sinner under what- 
ever sky. 

It is in the recognition and the practical reali- 
zation of these things that the noblest character 
and life are formed. No one who thus recognizes 
and realizes them can live unto himself; while in 
living not unto himself, but for others, character 
and life both broaden and grow beautiful and 
grand. Such a one sees in each human being a 
brother, and in all the world's suffering an occa- 
sion and a call for the exercise of those wise and 
tender charities in the forms of which active good- 
ness becomes embodied. The part of the Priest or 
the Levite is as impossible to him as to the selfish 



126 P ATM OS, 

soul is that of the Samaritan. Humanitj^'s call will 
be heard by him though si)oken in a whisper on the 
other side of the Avorld, and even the pale face of 
suffering is to him eloquent with aj)pealing speech. 
The endowments that enrich him above his fel- 
lows, the prosperity that has filled his garners or 
his coffers, the plenty and the peace that gladden 
his home and his heart, are to him reminders of 
the world's wide and cruel destitutions, and he is 
more thankful for what he has to give than for 
what he has to enjoy. Animated by such motives, 
martyrs have sealed their testimony with tlieir 
blood, missionaries have penetrated the world's 
deepest, densest gloom, carrying the light that 
should irradiate it, while in less conspicuous but 
no less real ways, faithful stewards of the Lord's 
wealth have dispensed it for the world's relief and 
the w^orld's salvation. 

Is not, then, the fellowship of suffering a noble 
one ? Whether it be the heroic constancy which 
endures, or the gracious charity which partakes, 
is there a purer or a nobler tie among all those 
which unite men in societies or in fellowships ? In 
nothing do we come nearer to the pattern of him 
who, that he might " taste of death for every 
man," w^as "made like unto his brethren." 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE. 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE. 

Is service a rivalry or a felloivship ? Upon the 
theory that it is tlie former, or that rivalry enters 
in any degree into its motive in one who serves 
truly, that would have been a very great hardship 
w^iicli came upon '' Moses, the servant of God," 
in his last days. We have no reason to suppose 
that he was so much more or less than a man as 
not to feel the peculiar circumstances under which 
his great career came to an end. Indeed, he him- 
self gives us a glimpse of his inmost heart in one 
thing which he sa5^s of himself near the beginning 
of the Book of Deuteronomy. Having sketched 
hastily the narrative of the forty years' wilderness 
life, now about to close, and having mentioned 
God's assurance to him that now, at last, the 
people should enter the land and possess it, he 
adds : '' And I besought the Lord at that time, 
saying, O Lord God, thou hast begun to show thy 
servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand ; for 
what God is there in heaven, or in earth, that can 
do according to thy works, and according to thy 

6 * 129 



loO P ATM OS. 

might ? / "pray thee^ let me go over^ and see the 
good land that is beyond Jordan^ that goodly moun- 
tain^ and Lebanon^ Then he says: ''But the 
Lord was wroth with me for your sakes, and 
would not hear me, and the Lord said unto me, 
Let it suffice thee ; speak no more unto me of this 
matter." As any other man would have felt in a 
like case, so Moses felt. It was added at the 
same time, in this word of the Lord, " Charge 
Joshua, and encourage him and strengthen him ; 
for he shall go over before this people, and he 
shall cause them to inherit the land which thou 
shalt see." The wilderness for Moses ; the goodly 
land for Joshua : a forty years' martyrdom of self- 
sacrifice and burden-bearing for the one, the har- 
vest and the triumph for the other. If Moses and 
Joshua had been rivals, how hard to bear would 
all this have been. United as they w^ere in the 
fellowship of a common service, Moses could see 
himself reproduced in his younger successor, and 
the work to which he had given himself with such 
devotion still going on under the inspiration of 
his own great spirit, if not by his own hands. 

It is by no means unusual for the close of a 
grand life to seem to us almost in painful contrast 
to that which had characterized its active period. 



FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE. 181 

Sometimes, in the natural and necessary order and 
development of things, one must say of another 
coming to take his place and be in turn the center 
about which the sphere of action shall revolve, 
what the Forerunner said of Him who came after 
him, " He must increase ; I must decrease.'' In- 
deed, John the Baptist, who used these words, 
was a most conspicuous example of that of which 
we speak. At one time the man in all that land 
most a center of public interest, crowds flocking 
to his preaching and his baptism, the rulers and 
teachers of the people compelled to pay him at 
least the homage of their dread and their hatred, 
Herod himself, the king, so impressed by the sin- 
gular power that was in him, as that when later 
he was hearing so much of Jesus he could account 
for all in no other way so satisfactory to his own 
mind, as to conclude, '' This is John the Baptist ; 
he is risen from the dead;" — this man is mur- 
dered, at last, in a prison, to gratify the spleen of 
a wicked woman and the caprice of a frivolous 
girl ! 

The incident is familiar of the coming of John's 
disciples to him, at a certain time, much exercised 
by feelings which they evidently supposed he 
must experience also : '' Rabbi," they said to him, 



132 P ATM OS, 

'' he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to Avhom 
thou barest witness, behold the same baptizeth, 
and all men come to him." John's reply was, 
'-^ In this very thing which you speak of, my joy is 
fulfilled and consummated. He who comes now 
is the Bridegroom. I am only the friend of the 
Bridegroom, rejoicing greatly because of the Bride- 
groom's voice." Later, in the prison where Herod 
put him, some mj^sterious doubt and trouble seems 
to have come upon him, as perhaps in the circum- 
stances was not surprising, so that he sent mes- 
sengers to Jesus to ask, '-'- Art thou really he that 
should come?" Yet even this, we may suppose, 
was but a transient cloud ; just enough to show 
us how the most steadfast mind may have seasons 
of depression, almost of wavering. With this ex- 
ception, Ave find no shadow upon the cheerful 
satisfaction with which John welcomed Jesus, and 
retired from the scene, that Jesus alone might be 
the one great actor there. It Avas not marring 
his joy, but consummating it, to thus give place. 
He had been the morning star, but he was willing 
that his own light should thenceforth blend, 
though he knew it could ncA^er be lost, in that of 
the advancing sun. 

The Master of all seems to have provided in 



FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE. 133 

very signal ways for making service a true fellow- 
ship. He makes himself the center, and then by 
bringing all his servants into relation with him- 
self, puts them in beautiful relation with each 
other. We are '' workers together with God,'' and 
in that very fact become '' workers with " each 
other as well. It is a thought applying to service 
in its widest scope and longest period, and to that 
which goes on in the detail of the most ordinary 
duties. Looking at the field in its extent, and 
the work as a whole, we see God's servants ever 
coming and going. Eminent and conspicuous 
men fill their term, have their own season during 
which shall be centered on them the eye and hope 
of those who love truth and desire to see all best 
things built up ; in turn they retire, as others 
have done, and give place to those who shall come 
next ; sometimes with the things they have begun 
well finished, sometimes taken away while the 
busy hand is in the midst of its toil. It is all one 
service. What one lays down another takes up ; 
where one sows the seed, another guides the 
growth or reaps the harvest. Jesus implied this 
principle of fellowship when he said: '*I am the 
light of the world;" ''Ye are the light of the 
world ;" — ^just as at this moment sun and stars are 



134 PATAfOS. 

shining down upon the earth, the stellar radiance 
blended, but not lost, in the solar beam. It is 
one service, and one grand ultimate result ; just 
as the thousands of brooks and streams become at 
last one river, bearing its vast volume of collected 
waters grandly on to the ocean. We see perhaps 
only the sun ; God sees every dimmest, faintest, 
most distant star, and knows how each ray, though 
eclipsed to us, helps to paint the rose or ripen the 
corn. We see only the great river; God knows 
where every little mountain spring bubbles up, 
and follows with his eye the course of every tiniest 
rill. We may not know, even, what we are doing, 
ourselves, in the common service. God knows, 
and nothing can prevent the fact that in this great 
fellowship we may all share. When we see in 
heaven some bright, redeemed spirit, far higher, 
nobler, nearer God than ourselves — a Paul, or a 
John, or a Judson — we shall remember wdth joy 
that on the earth we had wrought in one blessed 
cause, they in their higher sphere, we in our hum- 
bler one, and we shall then understand, as possi- 
bly now we may not, what this fellowship of 
service means. 

Nor let us fail to notice how in God's plan as 
developed in such fellowship as this, room is made, 



FELLOWSHIP OF SERVLCE. 185 

and in the very operation of the service itself, for 
every degree of capacity, and every means of ser- 
vice. It is wonderful what a variety of human 
faculty and efficiency God calls into this service, 
and how admirably they have been fitted, each to 
its place and work. The form and method of 
some particular of it often does not suit us, very 
likely ; he so uses it, all the same, as to make it 
answer its end. The joint-laborers are full of 
criticisms upon each other, see often real faults, 
sometimes perhaps imagine them. God has a way 
of turning even l)lemishes and infirmities to good 
account. Often that which we undervalue he 
highly values, and many times it pleases him to 
put special honor upon that which we had almost 
been ready to despise. We may feel that our own 
work is undervalued, and often may be ashamed 
of it ourselves. God will have a place for it and 
for us, and the fellowship of service is still ours, 
though we may but have given a cup of cold water 
in his name. 

Once, the writer of these pages saw, in one of 
the thronged streets of busy London, a man walk- 
ing whose limbs seemed nearly paralyzed. Old, 
poor, paralytic, he crept along so slowlj^ that 
though after meeting him the narrator went sev- 



186 PATMOS. 

eral blocks on and made a purchase, yet as he 
returned the poor man seemed to have got but a 
few steps on his way. Just before he reached 
hhn, on his return, he saw him stop at a cross- 
street, crowded with teams and carriages, many 
of them moving swiftly — a dangerous crossing 
for one like him. At this moment a man, just 
entering middle life, with an honest English face, 
strong, hearty, in a working-man's dress, was 
seen coming down the cross-street from the left. 
As he came up he saAv the dilemma of the poor 
paralytic, and without a word said, put one strong 
arm around him and bore him swiftly through the 
throng of carriages to the safe side, and then, 
without waiting for a word of thanks, went on 
his way as if nothing had happened. A very 
common-place incident, but there was a lesson in 
it. Much of our service in this world may be as 
purely incidental, as trifling, compared with many 
other things, as little marked, with as little knowl- 
edge, even, to whom it is rendered. It is a service, 
all the same; and if there be a recording angel 
and a book of human doings, Ave may some day 
see records of these humbler deeds standing far 
higher on the page than many a more ostentatious 
one. 



FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE. 137 

"I have known one word hang, starlike, 

On a weary waste of years, 
And it only shone the brighter, 

Looked at through a mist of tears ; 
While a weary wanderer gathered 

Hope and heart on life's dark way, 
By its faithful promise shining 

Clearer, day by day. 

" I have known a word more gentle 

Than the breath of summer air ; 
In a listening heart it nestled. 

And it lived forever there. 
Not the beating of its prison 

Stirred it every night or day ; 
Only with the heart's last throbbing, 

Could it pass away." 

Service, itself, is most noble. This is one of 
the lessons which we see our Lord at especial 
pains to impress. He evidently took account of 
that tendency in human nature, always more or 
less manifest, to regard service as having in its 
own nature something essentially menial. In- 
deed, we have already in these pages had occasion 
to notice those instances in which he detected the 
disposition so common to feel that to rule is the 
honorable thing — to serve, the demeaning one. 
'' Let my sons sit at thy right hand in thy king- 
dom," prayed the mother of Zebedee's children. 
"Which of them should be greatest," was the 



138 PA TMOS. 

question agitated by the twelve as they followed 
Jesus in the way, going up to Jerusalem. And 
when their Master said to them, '' If any man will 
be great among you, let him be the servant of 
all," it was setting forth to them one of the " mys- 
teries of the kingdom of God." For it is not thus 
that the world estimates greatness. It associates 
with the word ''servant" ideas almost degrading. 
Mastership, not service, is the worldly aspiration ; 
to rule, not to serve, what men love. 

Yet, after all, what is more noble than service ? 
Indeed, this is the real distinction, rightly viewed, 
of rank, office, reputation, power, when at last 
gained. The title and the high place are but 
trifles apart from this, and are felt to be such so 
soon as the novelty of recent possession has worn 
off. It is the true honor and the true advantage 
of elevated position that it opens doors of oppor- 
tunity, and provides both means and methods of 
service. Nothing save a sense of this, and a spirit 
in sympathy with it, can prevent elevated position 
from becoming utterly irksome, its tinsel honors 
an annoyance, its taxing cares an insufferable bur- 
den, its duties hateful , its conspicuousness felt 
simply as a more vexatious exposure to criticism 
and calumny. He who finds in such spheres cor- 



FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE, 139 

responding service, and with a love for that ser- 
vice holds and fills his place, has hit upon the 
only way to gain in place, position and power, any 
real good, even for himself. 

Service, too, is the assigned sphere of each thing 
and each being God has made. Little to the 
credit of intelligent humanity as the fact may be, 
it still 18 a fact, that only among human beings is 
uselessness, or that which is worse, ever found. 
This degrading attribute exists only as acquired 
in the abuse of what is the highest privilege and 
truest honor of a moral being — his power of 
choice. The irrational animal, the forms of or- 
ganic or inorganic being lower yet than the ani- 
mal, are what they are by the direct appointment 
of their Creator, and all have and all serve their 
appropriate uses. Everywhere throughout these 
lower domains we perceive service as the universal 
law and the universal result. Not a drop of fall- 
ing rain but serves ; not a shooting ray of light 
but serves ; even the leaf of autumn, as it fades 
and falls, serves, by enriching the soil into whose 
dust it dissolves and is lost. Destruction itself 
serves, by preparing the way for some restoration 
in which yet a higher end shall be reached. The 
fierce lightning which men fear they still have 



140 PA TMOS. 

reason to bless, since it is the sign and the instru- 
ment of salubrious change in atmospheric condi- 
tions. Even earthquakes and volcanoes serve ; 
since in the long ages they shape the earth's crust 
in those forms best adapted to human abodes. 
Beasts of prey serve, by preserving the wilderness 
from being absolutely overrun and hopelessly pre- 
occupied with animal prolificness, and so keeping 
it in a condition to be more readily subdued when 
man, the lord alike of the wilderness and of the 
fruitful field, comes to claim his own. Poisonous 
and pernicious things still have their uses and ful- 
fill them ; often beautiful uses, in connection with 
what at first seems only disgusting or deadly. God 
has no place, anywhere in his universe, for the 
idle or the useless ; and when the human being 
makes himself useless or idle, he is thrusting him- 
self into the divine economy as an anomaly and 
an intruder. 

In those higher ranges of being above man, the 
same law manifestly prevails. Whenever the 
Bible brings the angelic into the sphere of the 
human, it is always in a way to indicate that the 
angels also exist that they may serve. Their very 
name implies this ; they are '' the Sent Ones." 
Their office, we are told, is ''to minister/' This, 



FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE. 141 

too, in ways which, if genuine service could ever 
be demeaning, would be demeaning to them. We 
find them made, in the true and worthy sense of 
the term, servants to an order of beings far below 
them ; coming, in fulfillment of their charge, into 
a world which, to a dweller in their pure abodes, 
must be almost infinitely more a scene of wretch- 
edness and shame than to any Christian man or 
woman can be the foulest den in the worst corners 
of our great cities. They serve the thankless, the 
hard, the repellant. They serve on through years 
of constant repulsion, and only leave their work 
when the divine fiat dooms the object of their 
ministry as incorrigible. Not that this service is 
to them any less a joy than that which they per- 
form who minister near the throne of immaculate 
and ever-blessed Deity. It is one joy, as it is one 
service, in all the bright ranks ; and whitherso- 
ever they fly, on whatever errand, they are borne 
always with the wings of gladness, singing as 
they go. 

Such is this fellowship of service ; reaching 
down to the grain of dust we tread upon, and up- 
ward to the radiant archangel nearest to God. It 
is the Christian's privilege to enter into it in a 
certain express way ; intelligently, as chosen, not 



142 PA TMOS. 

blindly and mechanically, like the lower creatures 
about him ; — prompted, also, by the impulse of a 
new and higher nature, bringing him into sympa- 
thy with those bright beings whose inspirations, 
we must believe, mingle with his own, and lift 
him up, often, even above himself, into the sphere 
of their own joyful ministry. For, hear to what 
we, if w^e be Christians, are come ; we '' are come 
unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living 
God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumer- 
able company of angels, to the general assembly 
and church of the first-born, which are written in 
heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the 
spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the 
mediator of the new covenant." This is our fel- 
lowship, whether it be of love, of faith, of hope, 
of joyful experience ; in worshiping or in serving. 
In one of the old Italian cities there is a cathe- 
dral, the front of which impresses a visitor as 
something unusual. The whole of this front is 
composed of innumerable small blocks or strips 
of marble, various in kind, in quality and in color, 
presenting altogether a combination which seems 
quite as strange as it is picturesque. Centuries 
ago, Avhen this cathedral was in building, the city 
where it stands shared with Venice the commerce 



FELLOW SPriP OF SERVICE, 143 

of the world. Wherever any ships and any sailors 
dared go, her ships and sailors Avent, while the 
greatest maritime discoveries were made by sea- 
men who had taken their first simple lessons of 
navigation in her own beautiful bay. These sail- 
ors, desirous of some share in the erection of the 
cathedral that was to be the glory of their native 
city, obtained permission to furnish the stones for 
its front wall. These they brought home with 
them as they returned from their voyages ; mar- 
bles gathered on many shores, contributions from 
strange and distant quarries ; variously tinted ; 
some exquisitely fine in grain, and yielding a 
beautiful polish ; others common, yet not on that 
account rejected. The architect has wrought 
them all in. It is the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, 
in Genoa, and the thoughtful visitor, ere he enters 
at the great door, may be reminded, as he glances 
along the stately facade, how by a like method 
Gospel results come about in the use of Gospel 
means. 

But let us be careful to notice, as even in this 
is suggested, that the fellowship in service of 
which we speak is eminently a practical one. 
Perhaps there has never been a time when this 
was more conspicuously true than at present. 



144 PA TMOS. 

Save Avithin the sphere of that system, called 
Christian, whose forms and methods, like its ideas, 
never change, the old notion that Christian ser- 
vice is the peculiar duty and privilege of a certain 
class has almost wholly passed away — among 
most Christian bodies has, indeed, wholly passed 
away. 

The thought is a familiar one, how in very 
small seeds of innovation there may be germs of 
the widest change. It was so with that innova- 
tion upon this old idea — the Sunday school — 
when first introduced. Scarcely any Christian 
instrumentality was ever more humble in its be- 
ginning. Little knots of poor children, taught 
simple lessons out of the Bible by persons well- 
nigh as poor as themselves, and not much better 
taught, — church authorities, indeed, had small 
sympathy with it, and they could scarcely fail to 
regard it with contempt. ''Whereunto" could 
such a small thing as that ^^grov/" ? Could they 
imagine that this little spark was one day to be- 
come a flame kindling Christian enthusiasm the 
world over? that herein was the beginning of a 
change which should, in the self-same process of 
revolution, make the ministry as a profession less 
a dignity but more a power ? Yet this is what it 



FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE, 145 

has done, and it is one of the most auspicious of 
its results. 

For though the change we speak of does dis- 
robe the ministry, as a class, of a certain factitious 
dignity, it also, no less really, enhances its power. 
It corrects a fault which during many centuries 
had been the parent of vast mischiefs in the prev- 
alent Christianity. Sacerdotalism was the very 
root of the apostacy. Rome is Avhat it is exactly 
through the predominance of the passion for 
priestly rule. And the Reformers, in this, as in 
some other things, did not put away wholly inno- 
vations which the apostacy had brought in. The 
sacerdotal idea long lingered even with them ; if 
not in its worst tendencies, still in others which 
were quite bad enough. It made of the member- 
ship a class by itself; the subjects upon which the 
functions of the ministry were to be exercised ; and 
claimed for the ministry the whole duty of teach- 
ing and the exercise in general of direct Christian 
service. It required the membership to be very 
careful how it intruded, even in the smallest de- 
gree, into the sphere of the ministry, and watched, 
jealously, lest the laical foot should profane even 
the first and lowest of the steps leading up into 
the awful enclosure of the pulpit. 
7 



146 PA TMOS. 

We mean, of course, no disrespect to the pul- 
pit, or to the men, called of God, who discharge 
its momentous functions. We honor and value 
both. But it was wholly a false idea, that which 
prevailed through so many ages, that by an act of 
ordination, by whomsoever done, a Christian man 
became in some mysterious way somewhat more 
than just a Christian man engaged in Christian 
work, and which claimed to limit that which Jesus 
made the duty of every disciple, each in his degree, 
to a certain '' consecrated " class. There are men 
called of God to this especial service, and by vir- 
tue of that call they are separated from ordinary 
human pursuits, and devoted to the work of 
preaching Jesus and winning souls. But there 
has never been given to them such an exclusive use 
of this function as that there can be no effective 
alliance and interchange between them and the 
membership, in its discharge. As in every church 
there are varieties of talent and power of useful- 
ness, so it is in the spirit of Christianity that all 
these shall be called into service ; some of them 
in ways which shall be the reaching out of right 
hands of effective help to the ministry itself. A 
great revolution in this direction was organized, 
when men and women, unordained and with 



FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE. 147 

neither surplice nor frock, took upon them the 
ministry of Christian service in behalf of neglect- 
ed children. Developed in the line of that be- 
ginning, the change so introduced has brought 
into the field of efficient toil rare gifts, alike for 
teaching, for exhorting, and for persuading. What 
once went under the name of '' the laity,'' a class 
which was simply to be ministered to^ has discov- 
ered that there belongs to it, also, a ministry, and 
in this discovery the church has found means to 
multiply its strength a thousand-fold. 

In the ministry, itself, the application of this 
principle of fellowship in the service is highly in- 
teresting. Spheres of ministerial labor have very 
much multiplied and extended. The press has 
wrought a vast change in this regard. The school, 
as an ally of the church, has opened still another 
sphere, while the service of preaching and teach- 
ing is found to be not necessarily limited to par- 
ticular times and places, nor to certain formal 
methods. The ministry, itself, as a sphere of ser- 
vice, has greatly broadened, and thus afforded 
scope for varieties of capacity and culture for 
which there was no room under the notion that 
no service is ministerial save that of preaching 
from a pulpit, with text, and regular divisions of 



148 PA TMOS. 

discourse, a firstly and a fifthly, and an amen at 
the end. The privilege of this service is no lon- 
ger limited to the pastor of the church. The 
pastor, on the contrary, finds himself surrounded 
bv many associates, not alone in counsel but in 
labor. The editor of the religious journal works 
with him in the whole weekly round of toil. The 
agent of the missionary, Bible or tract society 
helps him pile fuel on the flame of benevolent 
enterprise among the people of his charge. The 
evangelist comes to second him at those critical 
junctures when special effort promises a special 
result. And the professor in seminary or college 
takes the young men converted under his minis- 
try, and training them for a like work, co-operates 
with him in thus duplicating and perpetuating 
himself in spheres which his personal ministry 
could never reach and through the lapse of years 
when his own voice shall be still. 

Glancing thus over the field of Christian service, 
we see it to be a busy scene, and find increased 
interest in the thought that all this service is in- 
deed, felloivship^ not rivalry. It is a truth that 
needs to be well laid to heart. The spirit of 
rivalry is exceedingly strong in human nature, 
even at the best. Almost in spite of ourselves 



FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE, 149 

that worthy emulation which aims only at achiev- 
ing, becomes competition for the fruits of achieve- 
ment, as personal to the individual. The race for 
the prize becomes an effort to distance some com- 
petitor. That unworthy spirit which prompts to 
esteem the credit given to another an injustice to 
oneself gains a mastery, and out of it swarms a 
brood of mean passions. Difference, which may 
and ought to be fraternal, becomes collision, 
and under the guise of championship, personal 
rivalries and jealousies get indulged. With its 
minister, perhaps, the church takes part ; or par- 
ties form themselves on a larger scale, and Chris- 
tendom itself is disturbed with discords which 
have their root in personal rivalry or dislike. 
Even Luther, there is reason to fear, was not 
wholly free of this ; and the German, the Swiss, 
and the French Reformation failed, Ave must be- 
lieve, to be one mighty accordant movement into 
the purity of a primitive faith and practice, partly 
because Luther, and Zwingle, and Calvin were all 
leaders. 

The effect of all this, as regards Christian influ- 
ence, and in its bearing upon the spread of Chris- 
tianity throughout the world, could not fail to be 
disastrous. Li proportion, upon the other hand, 



150 PA TMOS. 

as it has been remembered Iiow all service is fel- 
lowship, not rivalry, and working for the common 
end, the laborers have in some degree forgotten 
their differences, — in that proportion not only has 
the truth gathered force, just through the natural 
effect of an accordant testimony, but some of the 
greatest obstacles to its progress have suddenly 
disappeared out of its path. The world has a 
right to expect that they who represent before it 
such lofty principles as those which the Christian 
system sets forth will themselves be of a spirit too 
elevated for participation in the small, selfish 
rivalries that may deform other spheres of human 
action. The ecclesiastical egotist, the controver- 
sialist poisoning his advocacy of the high themes 
of theological truth with the bitterness of per- 
sonal piques and competitions, the laborers in 
humbler spheres forgetting their work in contend- 
ing who shall be greatest. Christians generally, 
jostling each other on the field of toil, instead of 
working fraternally and helpfully side by side, — 
4o they realize what an argument against their faith 
the world sees in their practice ? Do they per- 
ceive what ruin to souls of men turned aw^aj' from 
Christ by their unchristian course, ma}^ blast the 
triumphs they achieve over rivals or antagonists ? 



FELLOWSHIP OF SERVICE. lol 

Perhaps there is in all history no grander figure, 
save one, than that of the man of whom we spoke 
at the beginning of this chapter, as he ascends the 
mountain Nebo to its top, that he may ''die 
there." Though for more than a centur}^ he has 
toiled and fought, his step up the mountain-side 
is firm and strong, and his brow still shines with 
the light of an intellect vigorous as ever. He has 
not left the leadership of that great host down in 
the valley because worn out with its cares and 
longing for rest, nor because of any sense of in- 
competency by reason of age. He has not lost 
the enthusiasm which for forty years of unexam- 
pled vicissitude and ordeal has sustained him as 
the Captain and Legislator of Israel, nor does he 
yearn any less than in former times for the privi- 
lege of planting with his own hand the lion stand- 
ard of Judah in the soil of the promised land, of 
beholding with his own eyes the goodly Hermon and 
the kingly Lebanon. Yet he has left his whole 
charge, with its dignities and its privileges, in the 
hands of another, and serenely, now, with all that 
had become the very life of his life left behind him, 
is going to his grave, giving up to his successor 
that consummation of his toils and his hopes 
which to a soul like his must have seemed so dear. 



152 PA TMOS. 

He was never so great as in that moment ; and 
no part of his life reads us such a lesson as his 
death. It bids us not only be content with the 
allotment of service which falls to us, but bids us 
also see how, entering into each other's labors, we 
supplement and complete each other, till in the 
variety of gifts and varieties of service we see a 
divine plan harmoniously wrought out, with due 
honor and reward to small and to great. It bids 
us understand how beyond all that voice or pen, or 
any other form of advocacy can effect, there may 
be a testimony in behalf of truth and righteous- 
ness more weighty by far, in that cheerful brother- 
hood of Christian toil which, abhorring rivalries 
with all their bitter fruits, recognizes and rejoices 
in the fellowship of service. 



VI. 

THE KINGDOM. 



THE KINGDOM. 

Having, now, in the foregoing pages, considered 
some of the characteristics of that new moral order 
which was instituted in the world by our Lord 
Jesus Christ — more especially as these character- 
istics are personal to him and to those who in it 
acknowledge him as King and themselves as 
bound to him by every tie of obedience, trust and 
love — it is time that we gave attention to what 
may summarize and practically apply the whole. 
We would wish to do this, particularly with ref- 
erence to the vital connection there necessarily is 
between what is personal to the Christian and the 
growth, and spread, and more triumphant progress 
of that kingdom in whose fortunes all his own 
highest interests and hopes are included. 

Of the nature of this kingdom we have already 
had occasion to notice many things while speak- 
ing of the human manifestation, so wonderful and 
so engaging, of him who in it is King. We shall 
now need to enter more fully into that part of our 
general subject, particularly with a view to trace 

155 



150 PA TMOS. 

this connection of personal and experimental god- 
liness with the power and progress of the Christian 
religion. There are, of course, many ways in 
Ayhich it is conceivable that the kingdom of Christ 
should have been made to attain that ultimate 
supremacy which is predicted of it, both in the 
Old Testament and in the New. The divine 
wisdom is surely not restricted to any one mode 
of employing divine power in the achievement of 
contemplated results. Had it so pleased God, 
that occasion for reproach, and that argument 
against its claim to a divine origin which scoffers 
and infidels seem to themselves to have found in 
the always slow, often interrupted, and, to human 
view, even doubtful progress of Christianity, as a 
system of truth and a divine method for recover- 
ing the world to himself — might unquestionably 
have been wholly taken away, by making this 
progress so speedy, so unmistakable, so over- 
whelming in all its manifestations as to do even 
that supremely difficult thing — shut the mouth 
of the ribald caviler and skeptic. But it did not 
please God to choose that method, and we are 
bound to believe that this is for reasons infinitely 
sufficient. What we do see is Christianity con- 
testing with all other religions and systems its 



THE KINGDOM, 157 

right to a supreme place in the faith and life of 
men, and this, often, so far as human observation 
can perceive, at a serious disadvantage. This 
divine kingdom, with such a one as we have seen, 
filling its throne and holding its scepter, enters 
that field of competition where the kingdoms 
which are ''of this world" carry on their discor- 
dant strife for supremacy, and condescends, not 
with their weapons nor in their spirit, j^et in many 
respects subject to like conditions, to assert its 
own divine right of rule. It submits to be tested 
in every way that the true and the real are ever 
tested in this world ; it consents to be questioned 
as to its credentials and hands these credentials 
over to the scrutiny of even the most prejudiced 
and most hostile criticism ; it waits, while ages 
roll away, for the historical indications that shall 
at last establish its every claim, and silence all its 
accusers. In the days of its seeming adversity, 
'' they that dwell upon the earth rejoice over it, 
and make merry, and send gifts one to another."* 
It rests in hope till ''the spirit of life from God" 
shall enter into it, so that it shall stand again upon 
its feet. 

Prom all this it results, as a necessity, that very 

* Rev. xi., 10. 



158 PA TMOS. 

much in the fortunes of this kingdom must instru- 
mentally depend upon the character and course 
of those who are its pledged promoters. In point 
of fact, the interventions of divine power and pur- 
pose being always unseen, the progress of Chris- 
tianity in the world, to all human view, is and 
must be as the fidelity and efficiency of its adher- 
ents. God does not seem to have ever made those 
interventions such as to modify in behalf of his 
spiritual kingdom on earth that law of cause and 
effect, of means in their relations to ends, which 
is seen operating everywhere else. All through 
the Christian history, defection from the truth, 
perversion of Christian simplicity, corruption of 
Christian purity, and the many other forms and 
kinds of degeneracy, are seen working in the 
sphere of this kingdom their natural result, to 
that degree that it has almost seemed as if it had 
really been left within the power of man's unfaith- 
fulness to baffle and disappoint the merciful pur- 
poses of God, and to turn his beneficence into a 
calamity and a curse. What a tremendous argu- 
ment, in the mouth of infidels, have the abomina- 
tions of the papacy ever been ! And how hard it 
is, always, to parry the sneer that is both sharp- 
ened and poisoned by notorious facts of Christian 



THE KINGDOM. 159 

disloyalty ! Indeed, if proof were wanted, proof 
super-abounding and unanswerable, that this of 
which we speak is truly a kingdom of God, such 
proof is afforded, enough and to spare, in the fact 
that the treasons, and infidelities, and the internal 
riot and anarchy of those who were its sworn ser- 
vants and champions did not ages ago pull down 
all its defenses, and leave of it not even a ruin. 
What a marvel of gracious providence it is, that 
out of the deep gloom of the dark ages there should 
have burst the dawn of such a day as this in 
which we now live ! 

We come, then, to this, that the kingdom of 
Christ in this world is not, so to speak, a median^ 
ical power, disregarding the natural law of things 
and reaching its end by a mere gracious divine 
force ; but it is a moral order based in conditions 
of human nature and human experience, which 
make its progress in the world a continual ordeal ; 
and an ordeal also for each individual of those 
who profess allegiance to it. More than this : 
upon the fidelity or otherwise of Christians instru- 
mentally depend the fortunes of Christianity and 
the hope of the race. We are not stating this too 
strongly. What it might please God to do in the 
way of extraordinary intervention, in case Chris- 



160 PA TMOS. 

tiau fidelity were wholly to fail, no one has a right 
to even su23pose. Only we know this, that were 
such interventions to be made, they would doubt- 
less come in the same channels through which 
now the quickening divine grace works, and would 
appear in the restoring of that same spirit of 
fidelity of Avhose essentialness we are speaking. 
We have no right to think that God will ever 
work in this world otherwise than hy his people. 
For this reason the Lord of Hosts in the worst 
times has '' left himself a remnant," however 
'' small ;" and through the handful of corn in the 
tops of the barren mountains has he clothed afresh 
both mountain and plain. The law of connection, 
then, is perfect and invariable, between personal 
and experimental godliness — Christian growth and 
Christian excellence — and that progress and con- 
summation of the Redeemer's kingdom to which 
Christian expectation looks with such longing and 
such hope. This is what we are now to consider 
and apply. 

When Jesus said, '-'- The kingdom of God com- 
eth not with observation — the kingdom of God 
is loithin you^'' he indicated alike the nature of 
that kingdom and the method and law of its 
growth. In speaking of him as King, we have 



THE KINGDOM, 161 

already seen that his kingship is in that rule which 
he exercises in the realms of thought, of faith, of 
conscience, of those forms of human activity which 
most affect human destiny. The power by which 
such a kingdom grows, extends, and gains ulti- 
mate entire dominion, is moral power. And moral 
power is something wholly distinct and peculiar. 
It is not in the domination of intellect. It is not 
in the sway of mind over mind ; but of the moral 
nature of one moral being, in the various modes of 
its manifestation, over that of another. It is the 
action of individual upon individual ; and this in 
one certain way. Intellectual ascendancy, official 
elevation, distinction of rank, accidental advan- 
tages, such as wealth, culture, great reputation, 
may lend to it additional force ; but the radical 
element of its strength is wholly in itself, and may 
be mighty, irresistible, even when acting alone. 
Strong conviction, for example, always impresses 
and moves. It may express itself strongly or 
feebly, in many words or in few words, or purely 
in the voiceless action ; men always feel it, where 
it is genuine — feel it often without really know- 
ing why or what it is which thus moves them. 
Purity of character has often a singular effective- 
ness — purity of character embodied in pure ex- 



162 P ATM OS. 

ample. A man of small mental force, inferior 
social position, destitute of all worldly advantages, 
may move in the community where he lives, a re- 
cognized power, just through the operation of this 
silent, mighty influence proceeding from the very 
presence and aspect of one who walks with God. 
Fidelity in testimony, though amidst conditions 
ever so hostile, may master the most obdurate un- 
belief, and for the moment, at least, compel hom- 
age where there had been only derision. Was it 
the earthquake and the darkness, or was it the 
sublime fidelity of the Sufferer, which wrung from 
the centurion who gazed upward into the patient 
face that day, the confession, '^ Truly this was the 
Son of God!" 

Now, the effective power of the kingdom of 
Christ, in this world, being moral power, the 
measure of this power, instrumentally viewed, 
Avill be precisely the amount of genuine godliness, 
the degree of Christian excellence existing in the 
church and acting upon the world. Jesus ex- 
plained his own kingship by saying, '• I came into 
the world that I mioht bear witness unto the 
truth.'' In and by the truth he reigns ; so much 
of his truth as the world has — truth in utterance 
and truth embodied in life — so much has his 



THE KINGDOM. 163 

kingdom spread, and by so much has it advanced 
toward supremacy. Beginning in the individual 
Christian soul, it flows out through all the chan- 
nels of Christian influence, and is a mighty river 
or an insignificant rill, just according as its sources 
are abundant and full. 

We find this kingdom, then, first of all in the 
individual ; and in its manifestations there it 
is truly a kingdom. One impression which a 
thoughtful mind gains from the study of the char- 
acter and life of those who have done and suffered 
much for Jesus is, how much greater they them- 
selves are than the difficulty or the danger which 
we see them sometimes disregarding, sometimes 
striving with and overcoming. There was not a 
more kinglj^ man in England on that sixteenth of 
October, three hundred years ago, than was the 
old man who walked up High Street, in Oxford, 
as one who saw him describes it, ''in a poor Bris- 
tol frieze frock, all worn, with his buttoned cap and 
a kerchief on his head, all ready to the fire, a new 
long shroud hanging over his hose down to his 
feet ; " nor were more heroic words ever spoken 
than his cheerful encouragement to the fellow- 
martyr who walked just in front of him : '' Be of 
good heart, brother, for God will either assuage 



164 PA TMOS. 

the fury of the flame or else strengthen us to abide 
it." Neither did the courageous hope of a brave 
soul ever divine more truly than did his, as he said, 
while the executioners were binding them back to 
back to the same stake : '' Be of good comfort, 
Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this 
day light such a candle, by God's grace, in Eng- 
land, as I trust shall never be put out." 

As one stands, now, upon the spot where these 
two men, Latimer and Ridley, suffered, and hav- 
ing first looked down at the little cross of stone 
wrought as a memorial of the event into the pave- 
ment of the street that now runs there, lifts his 
eyes again to look about him ; as he thinks of the 
Oxford then and the Oxford now, of the England 
then and the England now, of the world then 
and the world now, how much greater than dis- 
grace, suffering and death were those holy, brave 
men and their work ! How much superior to the 
things present did their confident assurance of the 
things to come make them ! What a kingdom, in- 
deed, is the soul in Avhich God's grace has not only 
vanquished sinful strength but girded up meek 
infirmity ; put down the mighty from their seats 
and established the humble there ; won back to a 
man the empire over his own passions and his own 



THE KINGDOM. 165 

infirmities, and then returning tlie scepter to his 
hand bidden him be himself hencefortli a king, in 
God's name and in God's fear I What a king, in 
this noble sense of the word, was Jesus that day, 
when Pilate asked him, '^ Art thou a king?" and 
he answered, *■' Thou sayest it!" What majesty 
in the silence, even, when to buffeting and to in- 
sulting scrutiny he answered never a word ! In 
his own degree each Christian is to be just such 
as this, and by so much as he ^s such as this, by 
so much does he add to the power by which that 
kingdom which is '•'righteousness, peace and joy 
in the Holy Ghost," acts upon and sways the 
world. That he may be such as this, are those 
words made so grandlj" true, which we find writ- 
ten : '' Unto him who washed us from our sins in 
his own blood, and hath made us Mng^ and priests 
unto God ! " The subject of Christ's kingdom is 
both king and subject ; king in the realm of his 
own thoughts, passions, hopes, impulses, ruling 
himself^ in the interest of that mighty kingdom of 
which he forms a part ; subject, in that wider 
realm Avhich includes all regenerate souls, and all 
the powers, appliances and results of redeeming 
grace. 

Now, it can not, surely, be difficult to see by 



166 PA TMOS, 

what law it is that Christian excellence such as 
we here try to illustrate becomes the instrument 
by which the kingdom of Christ gains in power 
and prevalence. It is by the same law that char- 
acter always impresses and sways. Very much, 
indeed, which men attribute to other causes, de- 
pends radically upon character. We may show 
this by instancing how often it is that a career 
whose outset is made brilliant by qualities of 
genius, energy, and those fascinations with which 
some men are so richly endowed, degenerates 
later, and ends perhaps in ignominy, just through 
loss of character in those things which most affect 
individual and public confidence. Any man, in- 
deed, must be rarely gifted in genius to make 
head, in his career, against the counter effects of 
a character in himself morally vile. He can never 
do so wholly. Much is said of the advantage 
wealth seems to have over virtue, intellect over 
moral excellence, station and rank over merit, as 
regards the popular estimate. Great part of that 
Avhich men seem to see, in this regard, is decep- 
tive ; and much which is asserted, especially in 
that spirit of morbid complaint sometimes in- 
dulged, is not true. There is a form of worship 
which tlie Avorld pays to oenius, to power, to 



THE KINGDOM. 167 

wealth, to station ; it is, in the main, a form only. 
And to every right-minded person that secret 
homage which men after all do yield to genuine 
merit, and that sway which they, however uncon- 
sciously, realize in it, are worth a thousand times 
more than the hollow applause with which they 
may be greeted who are known to cover with the 
embroidery of mere show the rottenness of moral 
corruption. The whited sepulcher is brilliant un- 
der the light of the glaring sun ; but all the world 
knows it is a sepulcher still. So far as such persons 
do influence others, it is more through sympath}^ 
with their vileness, and so it is, still, by the con- 
tact of character with character. It is only for a 
time that purely exterior advantages produce that 
effect which to superficial observation seems so 
great. In the long run, it is what each man, es- 
sentially and in his own nature, really zs, that 
makes him a power, whether for good or ill. 

It is by this subtle yet mighty force, therefore, 
that character, sanctified and ennobled by regen- 
erating grace, becomes the great power we some- 
times see. And every one acquainted with the 
religious history of mankind must be aware how 
much, in the progress which has been made, is 
due to the supremacy of this force. Those great 



168 PA TMOS, 

movements which mark the epoclis of this progress 
are always seen to center in certain commanding 
personalities, which seem almost to gather up into 
themselves, and again to send out from themselves, 
that whole moral energy by which the movement 
is originated and sustained. The earliest period 
of the Christian development was the Apostolic. 
In it those men by whom Christianity was first 
preached were still present even after the last of 
them had gone home to glory, and were heard 
speaking even though dead. The next great 
period was Augiistinian ; one man, in it, repre- 
senting and concentrating that power of doctrinal 
truth and that ascendancy of spotless Christian 
character which long resisted the floods of ungod- 
liness and of hierarchical usurpation, destined for 
a time to carry everything before them. The per- 
sonality of Luther seemed to embody the spirit of 
generations of reformers, both before and after his 
own age, — that spirit oi Protest which stands for 
the defense of Scripture purity as against a cor- 
rupt and corrupting apostacy, and which now 
gives its name to that in faith and organization 
which is '' set for the defense of the Gospel." 
About Wesley and his associates revolved still 
another great movement tending to the revival of 



THE KINGDOM. 169 

spiritual Christianity ; while with other familiar 
and loved names are ever associated those enter- 
prises of modern missions which have made '^ the 
world" literally their ''field.*' It is not the par- 
tiality of admirers that secures to the men we 
have named, and others like them, their place in 
history. They hold that place by a right more 
divine than that of any hereditary king. God's 
gilts of intellect, his gifts of grace, and the dispos- 
ings of his Providence endowed them and stationed 
them ; but it was just because they were the men 
they were, a^ men and as Christians, that their 
place and power in the world's religious history is 
such as we see. 

These are conspicuous examples ; but they are 
mere examples, after all. In his own place, and 
his own degree, every Christian has exactly the 
honor and privilege which these men so eminently 
enjoyed. The same law, as to the effectiveness of 
moral power, efficient force of character^ operates 
within wide spheres and limited spheres. Astron- 
omers estimate that the mass of the sun and the 
power of his action upon other bodies is six-hun- 
dred-fold that of all those planetary worlds to- 
gether which he holds within the orbit of his 
mighty sway. Tongues of flame a hundred thou- 
8 



170 P ATM OS. 

sand miles in length blaze forth from the tre- 
mendous furnaces there forever alight, and fire- 
eddies thousands of miles across boil and whirl. 
Yet by the same law of action and effect not only 
are the planetary worlds themselves felt as powers 
in the universe, but myriads on myriads of phys- 
ical agents and physical causes, thronging the 
surface of these worlds, reproduce and multiply 
the work of the great central orb. Each planet, 
with its moons, reflecting the solar ray, helps to 
illuminate and beautify creation. Each ray of 
light, whether from planet or sun, fulfills its mis- 
sion, and ere it is absorbed and lost has imparted 
somewhere and in some way a blessing. The 
forces stirred into life and action by the sun's 
warmth and light, are busy in all directions, each 
working to an end, each contributing to make the 
world what God designed it. So while those who 
in their degree are suns and centers fill their 
grander sphere, it is given to all who are of like 
spirit and purpose with them, to fill kindred 
spheres, and each contribute to the resplendent 
whole. 

But are there not other elements of power at 
work, promoting the growth and spread of Christ's 
kingdom ? Doubtless : yet these are found upon 



THE KINGDOM. 171 

examination to center, in a very remarkable way, 
in this of which we have been speaking — the 
moral power of the individuah Says the Apostle : 
'' All things are yours,'' It is, indeed, true that 
'' Ye are Christ's and Christ is God's," so that 
over all and in all is the divine power by which 
all power acts, and to which all the glory is due. 
But none the less is it true that "all things are 
yours^ What a wonderful assertion is that ! 
'' Life " is yours : '' death " is yours ; '' the luorld'' 
is yours ; " things present and things to come " 
are yours ; " Paul, Apollos and Cephas " are yours. 
They center in you. These all are your instru- 
ments. They are things to work with. They are 
powers for another power to use. From all these 
sources is the Christian individuality enriched, 
that it may be felt in the full might of its conse- 
crated energy in Christian service. 

This thought deserves further expansion. It is 
no-wise difficult to trace in history the fact that 
the world's development subserves the aims of 
Christ's kingdom. We see, at a glance, how every 
manner of progress as to modes of intercommuni- 
cation and intercourse, all growth in wealth, all 
culture, commerce, government, new thought and 
old thought in new forms, science, learning, social 



172 PATMOS, 

improvement — all these put new opportunities 
and new power in the Avay of those who serve 
Christ in his kingdom of glory and grace. But 
what we need to remark is that they simply do 
thus put power and opportunity in their way. Of 
themselves, they are purely worldly, perhaps even 
irreligious. There is no such essential connection 
between them and the kingdom of our Lord as 
that naturally and of their own accord they enter 
into the service of that kingdom, and promote it 
as a tendency and outcome of their own. They 
must feel the grasp of a consecrated hand ; must 
be claimed for this higher service by a consecrated 
Avill, and the assertion of a right higher than any 
worldly one ; there must be a Christian man or 
woman laying hold of them and using them ; a 
Christian individuality moving in the ftiidst of 
them, shaping, directing, wielding them, or at 
the best they are useless to this highest of all 
ends, and even may become hostile, godless, 
devilish. 

As thus seized by Christian instrumentality 
besides, these elements of power are simply sub- 
sidiary to that of which we before spoke, the per- 
sonality of the individual, held in its hand and 
used for its purposes. When a missionary goes 



THE KINGDOM. 173 

to some field of foreign service, there comes to 
pass in his case a fulfillment of those apostolic 
words quoted above ; but only in the way now in- 
dicated. His intellectual preparation makes avail- 
able fruits of intellectual toil and growth during 
many ages. They come to him in a form to be 
readily used, but they have taxed other minds, 
and are treasures found in painful explorations by 
generations of toilers now at rest. Nevertheless, 
these are all his. In the provision made for his 
far journey and for his life in a heathen land, 
worldly wealth contributes its offering ; frequently 
the hard-won earnings, also, of the poor. To sup- 
ply him with even the clothing he shall wear, to 
provide him in his far-away home with even very 
ordinary comforts of civilized life, many hands 
have toiled, unconsciously toiled, many of them, 
the workers having no knowledge whatever that 
the product of their industry was to be found at 
last in the outfit of a missionary. The ship that 
carries him is an achievement of human art, study- 
ing, contriving, adjusting, improving ; a product 
of ages of development, a sign how much the 
world has gained upon the rude generation which 
first put forth timidly along the coasts of inland 
seas, in the crude barks it had fashioned ; and in 



174 PATMOS. 

its sails there breathe the impulses of a world- 
wide human enterprise which for ages has been 
extending and perfecting its schemes. Arrived 
upon his field, he is protected in his work by the 
power and prestige of the civilization which he 
represents, and perhaps by the intervention of the 
government into whose allegiance he was born. 
All these are his. But they come into connection 
with his work only through him, and are a power 
with a view to all the ends of that work only as 
he himself is a power. 

It is as man that the human being is made lord 
of this lower creation ; and it is as Christian that 
the servant of the Lord Jesus subsidizes creation 
in the interests of redemption. We always find, 
too, that in proportion as he is thus Christian does 
he do this effectually. Inconsistent, feeble, dis- 
loyal, as a Christian, he hinders his own work, 
whatever his gifts or his opportunities may be. 
The question of character is at the heart of all. 
What one is to do in the world turns almost 
wholly upon Avhat he is. For his hold even upon 
divine resources is conditioned in this way. In 
exceptional instances, God works by the unwor- 
thy. He makes a Balaam his prophet ; he makes 
a Jehu his soldier ; he suffers a Judas among the 



THE KINGDOM. 175 

twelve. But that word of the Lord on which we 
have a right to rely as a word of assurance in the 
Lord's work, is this : '' Behold my servant, ivliom 
I uphold ; mine elect in ivhom my soul delightetJi ; 
I have put my Spirit upon him.'' Spoken pre- 
eminently of him who was pre-eminently the 
'' Elect," this must be true of every one who will 
share either his service or his reward. 

Quite evidently, the question — how to make 
Christianity more a power in the world — is a 
question to which it need not be difficult to find 
an answer. To some extent, no doubt, it is a 
question of resources ; yet this is by no means its 
radical element. With God back of our means, 
it surely can not be absolutely a vital matter 
whether these are more or less abundant. Li fact, 
means themselves are the product^ not the root^ 
nor the hrayich ; and if root and branch are what 
they ought to be, product will not be wanting. 
Neither in the enlistment of Christian instrumen- 
tality and Christian gifts in promotion of objects 
that concern the growth of Christ's kingdom, does 
result depend radically upon the skillful manner 
in which the claim of such objects is brought to 
bear. Pains must be taken to have piety intelli- 
gent, nor can we expect that devotion, though 



176 PA TMOS. 

ever so cheerful and so entire, will bring its gifts 
to altars of Avhose existence even it knows nothing, 
will help in enterprises of which it never hears. 
Yet we are much mistaken if in the care exercised 
to have all the machinery of appeal as perfect as 
possible, it has not been too much forgotten that 
there must be a genuine Christian spirit to which 
to make appeal ; too much overlooked that after 
all personal godliness, Christian genuineness, in 
those whose efforts or whose gifts are sought, is 
the essential thing, a lack of which makes all ap- 
peal, however eloquent, and all machinery, how- 
ever admirable, futile as to the main result. Per- 
haps that tendency toward decline, at least that 
failure to enlarge in the measure of the work 
needed and of the numerical increase in the several 
denominations of Christians, of which all mission- 
ary and other similar organizations complain, is to 
find its remedy elsewhere than in improved organ- 
ization, more effective methods of appeal, better 
machinerj'- or even more power in driving it. 

A factitious interest must of necessity be fleet- 
ing and inadequate. We must believe that in the 
earlier days of modern missions there was in the 
zeal awakened much that was '' according to 
knowledge," and that breathed a spirit genuinely 



THE KINGDOM. l77 

Christlike. But we know well that much of the 
interest excited grew out of the freshness of the 
work, the new aspects in which the spiritual 
wants of the world came before the mind ; and 
very much also was awakened by what was per- 
sonal to the first missionaries — the devotion which 
prompted them to undertakings so hazardous, the 
dangers and sufferings they met, and the story of 
which invested them with a glory almost like that 
of martyrdom itself. In those days, when tears 
sprung to the eyes of hearers it was quite as often 
at the recital of these • personal experiences — 
touching and thrilling they were, too — as in con- 
templating pictures of the condition of the heathen 
world, or arguments drawn from a Saviour's suf- 
ferings and a Saviour's love. These last had their 
effect also, but the respect in which the zeal of 
that earlier period seemed to surpass what is per- 
ceived now was, we must believe, rather that the 
incidents of the work were fresher and more 
moving, than that the work itself was more highly 
appreciated, its claim more profoundly felt. If 
there has been a decline since, it is, we venture to 
hope, rather in the power of the adventitious ele- 
ment in missionary appeal, than in that of what is 
essential. 
8* 



178 PATMOS. 

It must be so always. The incidental can never 
be relied upon for permanent effect. The hope 
of the world, instrumentally, is not in the mission- 
ary society, nor even in the church, simply as an 
organism ; it is in the individual Christian man 
and woman. Society and church alike have powder 
to the end of their existence only as they draw it 
from personal sources found in the men and wo- 
men who compose them. And with these men 
and women, themselves, the power they have to 
impart, the efficiency to supply is in the meas- 
ure of their genuine piety. What they give 
or what they do, be it less or more, takes value 
and efficiency both from the spirit in which it is 
given or done. Mere money will not convert the 
world. Mere education in the ministry will not 
maintain truth against assailants or make it mighty 
in converting sinners. Unless there be back of 
these, and in them, Christian love and Christian 
consecration, they are as valueless as the merest 
dust. For God accepts gifts only as love brings 
them ; and he puts his power into consecrated 
means. 

It would seem, then, that more true Christians 
are needed, as the first need. The world-wide 
work begins in each Christian soul. It not only 



THE KINGDOM. 179 

begins there but it continually returns thither for 
that which shall feed it, sustain it, and make it 
efficient. So it is that the cultivation of personal 
Christian excellence is a main part of what we are 
to do in contributing to promote and spread the 
kingdom ot Christ. So it is that the ministry 
which does most to nurture genuine piety in the 
church does most for the work in wider fields. 
For the love and zeal thus fostered will demand 
opportunity of exercise, will press for a sphere in 
which to employ their activities, and an object to 
achieve. '' If there be first " the '' willing mind " 
begotten of thorough personal experience of God's 
redeeming and consecrating grace, all the rest 
follows. 



VII. 
THE PATIENCE. 



THE PATIENCE. 

Since the Christian personality and personal 
Christian experience are so vitally concerned, as 
we see, in all that most affects the promotion of 
Christ's kingdom in the world, we find that associ- 
ation of ideas, though peculiar, still most fitting — 
^'the kingdom and the patience^ The one of 
these symbolizes power ; the other symbolizes 
what seems the direct opposite of power, and still 
is in relations with it exceedingly interesting and 
important. Let us weigh well this thought — that 
" the patience " is the invariable and the essential 
condition of ''the kingdom; "in other words, the 
kingdom comes, or can come, only by the patience. 

We must be careful rightly to apprehend, here, 
the meaning of this one word, ''patience." In 
its ordinary use it indicates what is mainly a pas- 
sive virtue. It may be doubted whether even in 
its English form this expresses its whole force. 
In the older languages, and especially in the 
Greek of the New Testament, "the patience" is 
considerably more than mere submission under 

183 



184 PATMOS. 

suflferiiig or trial. Cicero has a definition that is 
useful to us here. He defines '' patience " as '' the 
steady and perpetual abiding in a purpose well 
considered." Augustine's definition is yet more 
to our present point. He describes this virtue as 
" cheerful, daily persistence in duties difficult and 
arduous, for the sake of honor and usefulness." 
That two men so much resembling each other in 
spirit and character as Augustine and Paul should 
employ kinded phraseology is entirely natural. 
Accordingly, we find that Paul's '' patient contin- 
uance"* is exactly Augustine's ''patience." More- 
over, the Greek word employed by P'aulf is pecu- 
liarly suggestive, we notice, in its very form and 
structure. Traced to its elements, J it is found to 
mean just "the remaining under" a thing; im- 
plying, first, a burden borne, and then, under this 
burden, a steadfast spirit that bears, and still bears, 
without flinching, without giving way. 

The word, therefore, in its whole signification, 
contains both a passive and an active sense. 
There is implied in it that unmurmuring acqui- 
escence which we commonly mean by it ; then, 
added to this, the idea of perseverance, " contin- 
uance ; " — the one accepting the burden, the other 

* Romans ii. 7. \ 'oT.oij.ovrj. J "o7to /isvo). 



THE PATIENCE. 185 

pushing on the work, biding the brunt of the 
struggle. It is '' enduring all things " while " hop- 
ing all things ; '' that which 

" Still achieving, still pursuing, 
Learns to labor and to wait," 

It is something, indeed, to be able, quietly and 
without murmuring, to endure ; yet this may be 
simple feebleness ; it may be yielding to defeat 
because of lack of energy to contend, accepting a 
burden in mere inertness, almost indifference. To 
endure and still persist is the true patience. If 
we look at Jesus and study his career, we find 
that besides his unmurmuring and unresisting en- 
durance, there was a persevering steadfastness in 
what he had come to do, that was even more to 
be remarked of him. The opposition and violence 
of enemies, he not only did not resist with like 
opposition and violence, but neither did he suffer 
them to turn him from his purpose for one instant, 
or delay its execution. 

Christian patience may take the form of Chris- 
tian sloth. One may meekly stand out of the 
battle, or keep away from the field of service, 
almost feeling that it is a virtue so to do, because 
in this there seems such a patient recognition of 



186 PA TMOS. 

the superior gifts of others. It is surely a nobler 
part to bring to the common service what we 
have ; a far more worthy kind of patience to close 
the ear against every disparaging question of self- 
doubt, and stand where the Lord has bid us stand. 
We may think, too, when God tries us, that it is 
much if we do not murmur ; and so it is. But is 
it not more to keep cheerfully on in the path he 
shows to us, and even when ''faint" to be still 
''pursuing"? 

It is of patience in this double sense that we 
speak, when we say that of " the kingdom " " the 
patience " is the invariable and essential condition. 
It is hardly necessary to urge that understanding 
by " kingdom " achievement, simply, and so taking 
the principle in its broadest application, what we 
here assert is true. Human experience quite suf- 
ficiently teaches the lesson that whatever of at- 
tainment is realized, its price must be paid, alike 
in endurance and in persistence. There are rare 
instances of rich worldly prizes coming to men as 
mere good fortune ; and in spite of all the lessons 
of experience there are quite too many who look 
for what they most desire to come to them in sim- 
ilar ways. But to such expectants it never, or 
very seldom, does. Such " lucky" contingencies 



THE PATIENCE, 187 

almost invariably come unexpected, and often the 
favored individual is as much taken by surprise as 
any other. Nor has Divine Providence seemed to 
adjust the system of things in this world in any 
way to favor the idea that the original fiat, '' in 
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," may 
grow, at last, to be a dead letter. Every mode of 
acquiring sudden riches, for example, is charac- 
terized in the effect of its operation so as to warn 
thoughtful men away from it, as dangerous and 
even deadly. Those localities in great cities 
where a certain species of gambling is carried on 
— reputable as yet, though it is to be hoped, not 
to remain so — are like those iron-bound coasts 
which the tempest loves, and where wrecks some- 
times lie strewn for ]nany a league. They are 
like pestilential shores, rich and lovely with all 
the luxuriant charm of tropical vegetation, seen 
at a distance, but breathing a tainted air, and 
showing amid the foliage and the bloom ghastly 
skeletons. Every method contrived by human 
cunning to evade that law of God which makes 
labor the price of achievement, though it has its 
rare and transient successes, still upon the whole 
is seen to be but an exhausting chase of what for- 
ever eludes and yet forever excites. Unhappy 



188 PA TMOS. 

the man who gives up his life to such " fitful 
fevers," despising the slower though surer meth- 
ods of plodding toil ! 

For the law is irreversible and radical. The 
Saviour himself accepted it, and placed even his 
own kingdom, w4th all its grand powers and re- 
sources, strictly under its control. His own an- 
nouncement of this fact, upon one interesting 
occasion,* always arrests the attention of the 
thoughtful reader. It was at a moment when by 
a simple, yet suggestive, incident, two great facts 
were made to stand before his mind, full of sig- 
nificance, charged alike with warning and with 
assurance. Certain Greeks had come askino^ to 
'' see Jesus." Representatives of the vast Gentile 
world, they spoke a word which was to be repeated 
on millions of lips, through hundreds of genera- 
tions, in languages yet to be created and in far- 
away lands yet to be peopled. Did he hear that 
word, '' We would see Jesus," thus echoing down 
amidst the ages to come, sounding back to him 
from islands, and continents, and peoples, seen 
only by his omniscient eye ? And was it thu 
which so stirred his spirit as that in a Divine rap- 
ture he exclaimed, '' The hour is come that the 

* John xii. 20-25. 



THE PATIENCE. 189 

Son of Man should be glorified ! '' And yet, side 
by side with this vision, so inspiring, came another. 
Or rather, between himself and all that fulfiUmejit^ 
he saw and cheerfully accepted the appointed con- 
dition. They^e was "the kingdom;" here, closer 
to him, was "the patience." Hence his words, 
immediately following those just quoted : " Ex- 
cept a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, 
it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth 
much fruit. He tliat loveth his life shall lose it ; 
and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep 
it unto life eternal." 

That the kingdom of God's Son, of him who as 
he was about to ascend into glory declared, " All 
power is given unto me, in heaven and in earth," 
should be placed under the supremacy of just that 
same law which rules in the infinitely smaller in- 
terests and aims that engage ordinary human life 
seems very wonderful. Nor are we allowed here 
to view the patience as a mere incident of the 
origination, development and consummation of 
this kingdom, but as belonging vitally to it ; or 
rather belonging to that spiritual order of things 
of which we might speak, with a like propriety, 
either as the kingdom or as the patience. Viewed 
upon one side it is a kingdom ; viewed upon the 



190 PA TMOS. 

other it is a patience. We have the whole rounded 
sphere of the divine intention and the divine ope- 
ration in it, only as we include both. 

That he, too, who came to place himself at the 
head of this kingdom, and with " all power " to 
rule in it, was, consistently with the law just 
named, himself manifested to human view as the 
^' Man of Sorrows," and under this pre-eminent 
character and designation stands forth, as we see, 
in human history, is a great and wonderful fact. 
It were easy to conceive of his manifestation 
under quite a different aspect. No violence, 
surely, would be done to the probabilities of the 
case, if we were to suppose him entering upon his 
career at full age, instead of submitting himself to 
all the weaknesses, perils, pains and vicissitudes 
of infancy and youth ; bringing with him, as he 
came, that which should protect him on every 
side against all the ills which ordinary humanity 
must endure ; and so fulfilling his mission without 
being ever reached by any dart of pain, ever 
wrung by any pang of sorrow, clad in an impene- 
trable divine armor, against which no '' weapon " 
should ever ''prosper." It is true that he would, 
in that case, never have come into such a relation 
with humanity as he now sustains ; and that must 



THE PATIENCE. 191 

be one chief reason why he submitted, not only to 
suffer, but to suffer in that degree, and so much 
as the very express purpose of his whole manifes- 
tation, as to receive this for his pre-eminent 
designation — ''the Man of Sorrows." Yet a 
manifestation free from all this is surely a con- 
ceivable one, and perhaps to finite anticipation 
would have seemed even the probable one. 

Nor can that which was just now intimated 
have been the whole reason of the manifestation 
as we see it. He came to take his place at the 
head of a dispensation which was to exhibit every 
where, and during the whole period of its devel- 
opment, an infinitely various embodiment of the 
same radical fact; a 'patience^ while a kingdom. 
This truth is a wide-reaching one, and out of it 
spring consequences of transcendent moment. It 
seems to include in its scope more, even, than 
what relates especially to humanity. Those allu- 
sions of Paul, in the eighth of Romans, can surely 
never be exhausted, in their real significance by 
any superficial interpretations. " The creature," 
as he uses the phrase, must mean more than sim- 
ply fallen man ; " creation " more than the painful 
wrestle of humanity with its guilty burden. There 
seems to be a linking in destiny of even the unin- 



192 PA TMOS. 

tellio'ent creation with that immortal creature 
whose ordeal here is so tremendous, and before 
whom stretches a future charged with such awful 
alternatives of glory or of ruin. To the spiritual 
eye, taking in the scope of God's plan of redemp- 
tion > as did that of Paul, " the earnest expectation " 
of the unintelligent ''creature" appears as ''wait- 
ing for the manifestation of the sons of God ; " 
being itself made " subject to vanity," not by its 
own will, but in accordance with the mighty de- 
signs of him " who hath subjected the same in 
hope." For even this creature " shall be delivered 
from the bondage of corruption into the glorious 
liberty of the children of God." Into the sphere 
of '' the patience," therefore, we bring even the 
unintelligent creation, and we see how, not sim- 
ply the man who walks upon it and tills it, but 
the earth, itself, '-'• waitethr 

At the head, then, of a scheme having this wdde 
scope, himself the supreme embodiment of that 
idea w^hich suggests at once the calamitv and the 
hope of the race and the world, Jesus stands. 
And that over which we see him exercising rule, 
having all power, in heaven and in earth, while it 
is " the kingdom," is also, and just as truly and 
emphatically " the patience." 



THE PATIENCE. 193 

Let us endeavor to analyze and trace this 
thought. The kingdom, we may observe with 
that view, involves the patience in its own nature. 
It begins in the experience of an individual soul, 
and works out from this beginning, spreading, 
growing, advancing toward perfection. There 
must have been, under this gospel dispensation, a 
very first instance of conversion to discipleship, a 
point of absolute beginning in the kingdom as exist- 
ing under the direct and personal rule of the Re- 
deemer. We may not be able to indicate to which 
of the twelve this distinction belongs. Perhaps 
the point of absolute beginning, in this respect, 
was that incident, on the second day after the 
baptism of Jesus, when the Forerunner for the 
second time pointed out to his own disciples '' the 
Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the 
world." Upon this second occasion, the two dis- 
ciples to whom the words were spoken immedi- 
ately acted upon them. They '' followed Jesus," 
and when to their question, '' Where dwellest 
thou?" he replied, ''Come and see," they at- 
tended him to the place where he dwelt, " and 
abode with him that day." Perhaps we may start 
from that humble Judean dwelling, from the words 
there spoken and heard, sinking deep into recep- 

9 



194 PA TMOS. 

tive hearts, and from the new life begotten in 
those two souls — from that spot, that hour, and 
those personages set forth in tracing the fortunes 
of this kingdom of grace and glory. 

Beginning thus, and destined to go on thus, 
* how much this new dispensation as it unfolds 
must of necessity demand of those who enter into 
it, and become at once its fruits and its instru- 
ments. For to the very end, all its methods and 
all its efficiencies will sum tliemselves up in just the 
utterance, the reiteration, the transmission from 
individual to individual, as the ages pass and the 
world grows old, of the words heard that day — 
'' Behold the Lamb of God ! " There are myriad 
ways of influencing and controlling men which 
even the world could supply to this kingdom. 
Divine efficiency has resources infinite, and were 
it consistent with the divine purpose, an energy 
might go forth from thence which should sweep 
through the earth and through the ages like a 
resistless, holy fire, consuming the corruptions of 
human nature, and in a furnace of God's own 
kindling purifying humanity and restoring the 
lost paradise in a swift, overmastering revolution. 
This, however, is not to be the method. Each 
soul won is to be gained in the ministry on its be- 



THE PATIENCE. 195 

half of some other soul. One by one, and every 
one in obedience to the same invitation, ^' Come 
and see ! " responsive to desires awakened by the 
same announcement, '' Behold the Lamb of God ! " 
— thus, and no otherwise, men will be brought to 
own their King, and range themselves under his 
gracious rule. The one ostensible, seen agency 
will be the weak and transient human one ; full 
of faults in itself, and compared with that with 
which it must contend in such disparaging con- 
trast, as that it is not only the weak overcoming 
the mighty, but it is '' things which are not bring- 
ing to nought things which are." What a grand 
patience it will be, as age by age the work goes 
on ; as amidst persecutions, flames, and all forms 
of hideous death it persists and prospers ; as gen- 
eration by generation the laborers are removed, 
the vacant places filled, and new voices uplifted 
Avhere voices long heard had sunk into eternal 
silence ; as with the expanding population the 
work spreads, as it crosses seas with the colonies 
that go to people new continents, as it toils on alike 
in the wilderness and in the city, always hindered 
yet never discouraged, often cast down yet never 
destroyed, always failing yet always triumphing ! 
What a kingdom ! Yet, also, what a patience ! 



196 P ATM OS. 

We find it, first, in the individual soul. The 
first work of patience is a home work ; and this, 
too, in more senses than one. To a conscientious 
Christian almost the severest trial of patience is 
found within the sphere of his own personal expe- 
rience. It is to be feared that in these times of 
great outward activity in the Christian life, the 
culture of the Christian soul is very much neg- 
lected. It is a more difficult thing, though at first 
it may not seem so, for one to be '' steadfast " than 
to be '' always abounding in the work of the 
Lord;" steadfast, in the sense of a thorough es- 
tablishment, a rooting and grounding in the essen- 
tials of piety. There are many things to stimulate 
in the work of the Lord, and many powerful im- 
pulses may be stirred, not originating in gracious 
affections, through the contact of influences such 
as are felt in all spheres of activity. For a man 
to retire into himself, away from the magnetic 
contact with his fellows, away from every object 
of ambition, and all the motives of rivalry and all 
the stimulus of a love of esteem — withdrawing 
from these, to retire into himself, study and 
severely scrutinize his own personal state, deal 
with himself faithfully, crucify sinful affections, 
worldly ambitions, all that to which the natural 



THE PATIENCE. 197 

heart most clings ; to persist in this fidelity to his 
own soul, through all the spiritual vicissitudes 
within him and without him, and so make growth 
in grace an aim never lost sight of, an aim in spite 
of hindrances still achieved ; — this is the real test 
of Christian faithfulness. This, above all, is '• the 
faith and patience of the saints." 

And hence it is that Christianity, often, in the 
times of its apparent strength, is seen smitten with 
an inherent weakness that makes even some of its 
seeming triumphs real failures. Is not this too 
much the fact at the present moment ? Two 
mighty anti-Christian forces are in these times 
making most alarming progress. One is skeptical 
science ; the other is apostate Christianity. Just 
at this very time, when the world rings with the 
echoes of Christian testimony, when Christian ac- 
tivity has reached a point beyond which it would 
seem almost impossible to go — just now these op- 
posing forces are making head with a rapidity 
most startling. Cultivated minds in all directions 
are becoming infected with the virus of a subtle 
unbelief which starts Avith mere questioning upon 
points of scientific interpretation, yet degenerates 
rapidly toward doubt, materialism and ultimate 
atheism. Even men accounted — not fools — but 



198 FATMOS. 

among the wisest, are now saying, not in their 
hearts merely, but openly and unblushingly before 
all the world, ''There is no God!" Christian 
faith itself feels the enfeebling contact of the same 
unbelief, while even from Christian pulpits a 
Gospel sounds that has grown ashamed of Paul, 
almost of Jesus. Meantime, the shows of mere 
ritualism are leading away in other directions 
other multitudes of those who, disgusted with 
Christian simplicity, fall in love with the pomps of 
sacerdotalism, and bring a virtual idolatry into 
Christian places of prayer. Tired also of personal 
endeavor to acquire a personal and intelligent 
faith, these perhaps in the end admit instead the 
presumptuous claim of an infallible church speak- 
ing by an infallible Pope, and are willing to com- 
mit their eternal salvation to the word of a priest. 
These things are gaining ground in the Avorld, in 
the self-same time that Christian zeal is so abun- 
dant, so loud and so active ; the era of Sunday 
schools, missionary societies, lay-preaching, of an 
eloquent and learned pulpit, and a press full of 
enterprise and of power. 

In the working of its machinery, the Christian 
patience of these times acquits itself nobly. In 
the fostering and gaining of power does it do so ? 



THE PATIENCE. 199 

Do we not see a tendency in all our machinery to 
become mere machinery ? and is not this just be- 
cause personal Christian culture is so much neg- 
lected ? Can we not detect in ourselves a feeling 
that in such a busy age we have not time to give 
much attention to the state of our own souls, and 
a disposition to trust all that to the discipline of 
the work and the effect of the contact of Christian 
soul with Christian soul ? Do we not read our 
Bibles mostly as a preparation for the Sunday 
school or the pulpit, and do we not almost forget 
our private devotion in the apparent urgency of 
some call to outward service ? There is a home- 
work, here, for patience, depend upon it ; patient 
scrutiny of our own spiritual state, since many of us 
may be building our hopes of heaven upon the 
sand of mere Christian activity ; patient attention 
to means of grace for our own soul's good, not 
merely as a machinery by which to reach others ; 
patient fidelity in private religion, in devotional 
reading of God's word, in closet prayer, in earn- 
est, daily '' looking unto Jesus " for grace upon 
grace. The kingdom of God without has power 
just in proportion as the kingdom of God within 
has powder ; and this power comes of '-'- 'patience T 
And yet, there must be Christian activity. 



200 PA TMOS. 

There seems a strong tendency, in these times, 
toward the extreme just noticed ; but it would 
be only returning to that other extreme from 
which the Christian world swung away so long 
ago, if Christians were again to grow recluse, 
ascetic, self-absorbed, as in the daj^s when mon- 
achism so prevailed. In those forms of self-chas- 
tening there were indeed most extraordinary 
examples of patience ; but a patience misdirect- 
ed, and bearing, often, most inauspicious fruit. 
We read with wonder — we who find society and 
the world's stir so essential to us — of the years 
passed amidst a round of formal duties whose 
monotony seems to us like absolute torture, and 
whose narrow sphere like a prison. What self- 
control must have been necessary in those who, 
as many did, made this condition of life a scene 
of real Christian growth, and in whom some of 
the loveliest virtues of liuman character blossomed 
and bore fruit, though not either an hundred, 
sixty, or even thirty-fold. There was the sedu- 
lous devotion to soul-culture ; but the result was 
one-sided and inadequate, because to this which 
was thus private and personal there was not 
added that engagement of Christian sympathy and 
Christian enterprise in Christian work. It would 



THE PATIENCE. 201 

not in the least help the difficulty referred to just 
now if Christians were to swing back to that old 
extreme. Infidelity and the delusions of the 
Man of Sin Avould not any the less prevail, but 
vastly more, if the intense Christian activity of 
the age were suddenly to pause, and stillness, 
silence and desertion settle down, in any degree, 
upon these vast fields of Christian toil. There is 
not one of these spheres of work for Jesus and 
for souls which ma}" be abandoned ; not one in 
which Christians should aim to do less ; in all of 
them they should burn and press on to do more, 
and yet more and more. '^ 

The union of two things apparently so opposite 
in their nature, of which we here speak, is cer- 
tainly difficult, and calls for very much of that 
Christian virtue which we characterize as 'patience. 
Perhaps the very same thought is implied in the 
Saviour's word, '' Watch ! " '' Watch and pray." 
There is great patience needed in watchfulness, 
and in this case the two would almost seem to be 
identical. It requires a very great deal of alert 
Christian persistency to provide equally for the cul- 
ture within and the work without, taking care that 
neither shall encroach upon and hinder the other ; 

and it requires very great constancy and steadi- 
9* 



202 PA TMOS. 

ness, that which seems peculiarly implied in the 
idea of patience, to abide in this watchful diligent 
frame, not yielding to coaxing self-indulgence on 
the one side, nor to mere superficial excitements 
on the other. Yet Christian strength and the 
largest Christian efficiency must come exactly of 
this. The two ideas are associated in the apos- 
tolic exhortation : " Be ye steadfast^ unmovable, 
always abounding,'' While it does not suffice to 
be always abounding and yet always drifting ; 
neither does it answer to mistake mere sl'agfoish- 
ness for that self-contained, fruitful abiding in 
which the soul itself is made to '' abound." 

Plain enough, then, is it that when one connects 
himself Avith this kingdom he does not simply 
moor himself to a mighty power, marching on in 
a grand self-propulsion which carries forward to 
the consummation, without effort of their own, all 
who thus link themselves to its movement and to 
its fortunes. Each one who enters the kingdom is 
to join his own effort with that of all others there 
in pushing forward all that may be involved in its 
plan and method, and aid to fulfill its destiny. 
'^ We are workers together with God." We par- 
take of the movement, not simply by virtue of our 
personal connection with God's great scheme of 



THE PATIENCE. 203 

grace, but by a growth in grace personally, which 
is so far forth a growth in the kingdom itself, and 
by aiding the movement with our shoulder to some 
one of the many wheels. 

Nor must we leave out of the view w^e now take 
that other element in the patience which, perhaps, 
after all, is its chief one. Here the mind turns 
again to Patmos and the Exile there, claiming fel- 
lowship with persecuted and suffering Christians 
throuo'hout the world as their '• brother and com- 
panion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and 
patience of Jesus Christ." It may be that for 
John it was simply impossible to conceive of a 
Christian in this world any otherwise than as one 
suffering for his faith. To him the world stood to 
Christianity in an attitude of unyielding, ever- 
threatening hostility. He perhaps would take his 
Lord's words, '' In the world ye shall have tribu- 
lation,'' as implying that down to the very end 
the lot of the church would be substantially what 
to his observation and experience it had always 
been : and the added words, '* Be of good cheer, 
I have overcome the world/' as simply implying 
that in hero-struggles and martyr-deaths the dis- 
ciple would to the last be repeating over and over 
his Lord's own conflict and vie tor v. This natural 



1^04 PA TMOS. 

anticipation history Avould not, in the ages to 
<3ome, fully approve, and yet perhaps substantially 
it was genuinely prophetic. 

At all events, we iind that the patient continu- 
ance of Christ's followers in the successive ages, 
joined with their holj^ persistence, under great 
suffering and great temptation to deny their faith, 
has been to a remarkable degree the instrument 
of the growth of Christ's kingdom. There is, no 
doubt, in this, the operation of a law in human 
nature that may act apart from interventions of 
divine grace. Men naturally take part with those 
whom they see suffering without cause, punished 
as criminals while known to be blameless, and are 
especially moved b}^ examples of heroic fidelity to 
conscience and to what is held as truth. But 
this, while it may explain the often outspoken 
sympathy of the crowds who came together to see 
the martyrs die, does not equally explain the fact 
that even in times when persecution was hottest, 
converts multiplied almost more than when its 
fires were still. We must believe that during 
those ages the patience came into peculiarly vital 
association with the kingdom ; that the divine 
grace crowned it with honor as an instrumentality 
specially chosen and approved, and that it was a 



THE PATIEA^CE. 205 

deep glance into the methods of that grace which 
the Exile had from his rocky outlook, down amid 
the ages of the future, when he spoke thus of 
'' the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ." 

We must not be too certain that the world 
needs in its recovery to God and holiness no more 
of the instrumentality of Christian sufferino-. It 
is possible that our Christianity has somewhat re- 
laxed, in this regard, and that, under the impres- 
sion that no other ages of persecution are to 
intervene, and no other such ordeals as in the 
past are to be expected, the heroic element is suf- 
fered, in some degree, to die out of the church, 
and out of the individual Christian soul. Even so 
much of this element as the missionary enterprise 
called for at first, grows less essential, apparently, 
as heathenism becomes less formidable through its 
contact with Christianity, and the swift and easy 
intercourse of the very ends of the earth with 
each other make the whole world one. God may 
see it necessary, in order to restore this spirit to 
our Christianity, to allow great ordeals to once 
more test the faith and constancy of Christians. 
Human strength, that it may be equal to even the 
lesser burdens appointed to it, seems to require 
occasional discipline under the pressure of those 



206 PA TMOS. 

which are greatest. At all events, it will not do 
to come down from the watch-towers because no 
hostile bugles are heard in the distance leading 
against us the march of an enemy ; nor to put off 
our armor because no deadly weapon is just now 
lifted to smite. There may be a lurking, deadly 
peril in exactly the present condition of the 
world ; and what with Christian unconsciousness 
of danger and anti-Christian subtlety and hostil- 
ity, a state of things may be drawing on in which 
the children of the kingdom will again need the 
whole panoply of Christian patience, and every 
element of possible strength alike in enduring and 
in resisting. Oh, unwatchful Church of Jesus ! 
What knowest thou how near the hour of thine 
ordeal and thine agony may be ? 



VIII. 
PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION, 



PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION. 

It is one of the hopeful signs of the times that 
in various ways — in two especially — the atten- 
tion of thoughtful minds is called to the question, 
what ought to be the effort and hope of Christians 
as regards the progress and consummation of the 
kingdom of Christ ? Upon the one hand, the 
reasonableness and legitimacv of all Christian en- 
terprise that makes the world its field and an- 
nounces its hope that the world may, in God's 
appointed time, itself become Christian, is chal- 
lenged by those who seem to deny that Christian- 
ity is a grand scheme for the regeneration and 
recovery of a lost race, holding it to be simply 
an accompaniment and ornament of civilization. 
Upon the other hand, we find the question agi- 
tated amongst Christians themselves, whether it 
is not fully time to engage in the enterprise of 
preaching the Gospel to every creature, not simply 
in the vague belief that in some future age this 
may be done, but in the clear conviction that in 
our own age it ouglit to be done. The challenge 

209 



210 PA TMOS. 

of the skeptic will have been a service to the 
Christian world if it summons it to a thorough 
search for the foundation and warrant of its hope, 
and to a careful scrutiny of the hope itself, with a 
view to see what and how much it implies. Mean- 
time, the result of Christian inquiry in this direc- 
tion seems to make it clear that at least the actual 
fact of a world-wide proclamation of Gospel truth 
is by no means a chimerical one. 

We deem it pertinent to copy here the words 
of an earnest advocate of this view ;* words which, 
indeed, ma}^ not here for the first time come to 
the attention of the reader, yet may be allowed, 
no less, in view of their applicability to the point 
in hand. 

'' To every creature. Is this possible ? and is 
it therefore our duty ? The Christians of each 
age are to give the Gospel to the people of that 
age. Every Christian is to tell the good news to 
as many as he can reach. Christians collectively 
are to tell it if they can to the world. What is 
the limit of our ability and duty ? In ten or 
twenty years can repentance and remission of sins 
be preached through Christ to all nations ? I be- 

* Rev. Joseph Angus, D.D., before the Evangelical Alliance, 
October lo, 1873. 



PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION, 211 

lieve they can. The Christians of the nineteenth 
century are more able to preach the Gospel to the 
whole world than the Christians of the first cen- 
tury were to preach it to the world of their day. 
If so, then the duty is binding, and the last com- 
mand of our Lord is a summons claiming a literal 
obedience from us all. 

'' We can do it. Remember how largely our 
material facilities are increased. When Franklin, 
printer and statesman, wished to marry, his wife's 
mother objected to the marriage because there 
were then two presses in America, and she thought 
there was not room enough for a third. It is not 
one hundred years since, and there are now some 
eight thousand printing-offices in this country 
alone. A tithe of them could print the New Tes- 
tament for the world. Only ten years ago, to 
cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific was a six 
months' journey, perilous and toilsome in the ex- 
treme ; now it is pleasantly done between Monday 
morning and Saturday night. Any man who 
has to travel much will save eight weeks in every 
ten, and if he spend his life in traveling, the facil- 
ities of travel would practically multiply his life 
five-fold. In half a century of travel, a missionary 
can now effect as much as he could have done in 



212 P ATM OS. 

two centuries and a half, one hundred years ago. 
The yearly income of England is live or six times 
larger than at the beginning of the century, and 
has doubled within thirty years. The increase of 
the United States doubles, it is said, every five- 
and-twenty years. In printing power, in facilities 
of travel, in material wealth, the church is incom- 
parably stronger than it has ever been. 

"* But what is it we need to fallill this duty ? 
With fifty thousand missionaries at work for ten 
years, and witli fifteen millions a year for ten 
years to support them, it is demonstrable that the 
Gospel might be preached, and preached repeat- 
edly, to every man and woman and child on earth. 

''It seems a great company — fifty thousand 
preachers. And yet the number is not one per 
cent, of the members of evangelical churches in 
Christendom. There are three or four denomina- 
tions in America, any one of which could suppl}^ 
all the preachers Ave need. England sent as many 
men to the Crimea to take a single fortress, and 
to keep up for a few years a Mohammedan despot- 
ism. Ten times the number of men fell on each 
side in the great American war. Five hundred 
years ago, the Crusades had cost more lives, and 
they thought to win from men well-nigh as chiv- 



PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION. 213 

alroTis as the invaders, an earthly Jerusalem and a 
temporal sovereignty. And can not fifty thousand 
redeemed men be found to win back the world to 
Jesus Christ ? Have our hymns no meaning ? 

** ' O send a thousand heralds forth, 

From east to west, from south to north, 
To blow the trump of jubilee, 

And peace proclaim from sea to sea.' 

'' It seems a great sum — one hundred and fifty 
millions sterling, in ten years ; yet it is less than 
three pounds a year — fifteen dollars — from each 
member of evangelical churches in Europe and 
America. England alone spends as much as the 
whole one hundred and fifty million pounds every 
two years on intoxicating drinks. The Crimean 
war cost one hundred millions, the American war 
ten times as much. An annual tax of seven pence 
in the pound on the income of Great Britain would 
yield the fifteen millions we need. Nay, more, it 
would not be difficult to name ten thousand pro- 
fessino' Christians who could o^ive it all ! Look- 
ing only at men and money, is it not self-evident 
that it can be done ? 

''I have not forgotten the difficulties of all 
kinds that surround this enterprise — travel, sick- 
ness, new tongues, unknown regions, barbarous 



214 PA TMOS. 

tribes, the great wratli of one who would soon 
perceive that his time is short. I know, or can 
nnagiiie them all. But I venture to say that 
whatever these difficulties, they would be over- 
came if English national honor, or American pro- 
gress, or the German Fatherland, or the Swiss 
liberties, were at stake ; if diamond beds or gold- 
fields had been discovered, if even a Nile were to 
be traced and mapped. Is there a part of the 
earth that English or German-speaking people 
could not penetrate — for a consideration ? And 
shall Christ's commands and the world's needs fail 
to move ? I repeat it — it can be done ! " 

We quote these emphatic words, chiefly with a 
view to show that in the development of things 
under the order of divine Providence, working 
ever in the interests of divine grace, a time has 
come Avhen the evangelization of the world — at 
least in the sense of a world-wide preaching of the 
Gospel — is an enterprise having a solid statistical 
basis. Whatever of vagueness such proposals 
may once have seemed to have, vanishes in the 
presence of facts and figures which prove that 
were the resources of Christendom in an}^ consid- 
erable degree commanded and concentrated to this 
end, Gospel preachers might occupy the entire 



PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION. 215 

globe as completely as is now done in those dis- 
tricts most highly favored with the ministry of 
evangelism. Were men and money devoted to 
the undertaking even in the measure common in 
cases where a great material end is earnestly 
sought in the use of adequate means, and were 
this to be done throughout Christendom, the 
figures prove that what is here spoken of is wholly 
practicable. 

We wish, now, to put in relation with this prac- 
tical fact the thoughts with which, in our discus- 
sion thus far, we have been dealing. Let us come 
to details, and inquire in what ways, specifically, 
personal Christian development must bear upon 
and influence not only the progress^ but the con- 
summation of the great Gospel design. 

1. The first and most obvious consideration has 
respect to the practical and statistical view of the 
subject just presented in the words of another. It 
is impossible to imagine a generous and rich Chris- 
tian development, in any instance, which should 
not include the noble virtue of Christian liberality. 
The special honor put upon this element of regen- 
erated character in the New Testament, is emi- 
nently worthy of remark. Attention is frequently 
called to it, and in terms to show that it is esteem- 



216 PA TMOS. 

ed as of high moment and value in every wa}'. 
Perhaps Jesus had some intention this way when 
to the young man, claiming a clear record in all 
matters of formal virtue, who nevertheless sought 
a solution for the doubt which still oppressed him, 
and so came askinL>% ''What lack I yet?*' he 
offered a test of his heart's real condition, and so 
an answer to his query what his moral need 
still was, in the injunction to become a bene- 
factor, and devote his wealth to the relief of the 
suffering. This lesson, with its application, seems 
in keeping, in a certain way, with that picture of 
the Son of Man in his glory, and the blessed and 
the cursed singled out and judged according as by 
each the destitute, the sick, the prisoner had or 
had not been remembered and relieved. There 
would appear to be in this element of the regene- 
rate nature something so radical and so decisive 
as to make it the supreme test of a soul's actual 
spiritual state. Consistently with this an apostle 
asks, wdth almost a fearful emphasis, " If one of 
you see his brother have need, and shutteth up 
his bowels of compassion against him, how divelleth 
the love of God in hiinf' Consistent, also, with 
the same, are those commendations Avhich still 
another apostle showers upon his brethren in Ma- 



PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION. 217 

cedonia, alike for the generous Christian sj^mpathy 
they manifested for the poor saints in Jerusalem, 
and for their fraternal kindness to himself. Most 
suitably, in this view, was the very opening of the 
Christian -dispensation characterized by a glow of 
mutual charity and consideration in which each 
member of that first Christian church, declining to 
call any worldly possession '' his own," devoted all 
to the common benefit and to the joint service of 
the common cause. 

It is by no means in accordance with either 
New Testament precept or example, to account 
this grace as something incidental and subordinate; 
its presence and effect well enough, desirable in 
such as have means to indulge it, but not in any 
radical sense essential. Who shall say how many 
a Christian character is vitiated and made worth- 
less just bj^ that selfishness and worldliness which 
this element in regeneration is intended to de- 
stroy ? Who shall say how many Christian hopes 
go to wreck upon the deceitful shoal of a worldly, 
close and selfish love of mere mammon ? It may 
be found, some day, that the calls and needs of 
great Christian enterprises in this age were them- 
selves like a throne, set for the severing of the 
true from the false among those claiming the 
10 



218 P ATM OS. 

Christian name, — a throne with the Son of Man 
seated in it, in all the glory of Gospel manifes- 
tation and achievement — while in the appeal of 
the world's perishing millions, and in the re- 
sponse it found, the thousands and hundreds of 
thousands of nominal Christians Avere tried and 
judged I 

Necessarily, the degree in Avhich this element 
appears in the Christian development of any age 
must largely determine the measure in which the 
Christian strength of the period is enlisted in the 
work of Gospel propagation, and so, instrument- 
ally, the measure of the Gospel triumph. The 
facts and figures to which we referred above 
are an exhibition of possibilities. These become 
actual achievements just in so far, and no farther, 
as a generous Christian enterprise makes them so. 
If, while they are possibilities, they still in the 
main are unachieved, the fact is so far an impeach- 
ment of our Christianity, and gives just occasion 
of fear that the Lord of all, looking at his church 
on earth as a whole, and at the mass of professing 
Christians as individuals, finds, in spite of all that 
is attempted and done in his name, deficiencies 
vital and grievous. What a comment upon the 
facts set forth in this view of possibilities is the 



PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION. 219 

record repeated each year, each day, in reports 
and appeals in behalf of the world-wide cause of 
missions, that even the limited measure of at- 
tempted work in this cause is ever hindered and 
even imperiled hj the lack at once of money and 
of men ! With ability to preach the Gospel to 
the nations, we almost leave to starve upon their 
fields even the few preachers whom we send, 
while, though the doors swing open everywhere, 
only here and there a messenger from Christen- 
dom enters ; and at home the organizations framed 
for the sending and support of such fall into debt 
and discouragement, because those who claim to 
have the love of God dwelling in them shut up 
the bowels of their compassion against even the 
pleading call of men eager to know the truth and 
longing to come into the light. It is a matter 
that should be looked to. We have cause to fear 
lest our Christian development shall come so 
grievously short of our Christian privilege and 
duty, as that, with the world open to us, and the 
nations calling, we shall make the tremendous 
mistake of imagining that costly home expendi- 
tures may take the place of adequate gifts for the 
work abroad, and that Ave are Christians and 
Christ's servants because we call him '' Lord," 



220 PA TMOS. 

because we eat and drink in his presence, and he 
has taught in our streets. 

2. We may see again, how the personal Chris- 
tian development must bear upon and influence 
alike the progress and the consummation of our 
Lord's great designs, by noticing in this connec- 
tion the moral power of Christian excellence. The 
most conclusive argument in behalf of Christianity 
is a Christian man. Take out of the world, out of 
the condition of mere engrossment in worldly 
pursuits, out of that state of spiritual deadness 
where the great mass of men remain ; out of his 
hardness, and blindness, and ungodliness, a man ; 
put the new song in his mouth, the mighty new 
love in his heart, the new spirit and the new 
meaning in his life, and let him stand forth the 
new creature he thus becomes ; it is an argument 
in behalf of Christianity that is nothing less than 
a conclusive moral demonstration. Let the infidel 
look at such a one, and explain, if he can, con- 
sistently with his infidel theories, and so as to 
meet adequately the real conditions of the ques- 
tion, how this man became thus changed. Let the 
intelligent heathen contemplate him, following 
him in a daily life that exemplifies all manly and 
Christian virtues, and which in every aspect 



PROGRESS AA'D CONSUMMATIOX. 221 

stands in such emphatic contrast with his own. 
Let the example and testimony of this man, how- 
ever humble his condition, or moderate his en- 
dowments, or lowly his station, have a yoice and 
an audience ; and there can ])e but one just con- 
clusion. What is seen in him is seen under no 
circumstances of change, in the operation of no 
causes, saye those which Christianity supplies. 
And it is something so radical, so abiding, so fruit- 
ful, so supernatural in its only possible sources, 
as that candid scrutiny can bring honest minds to 
but one result. And the demonstration is clear, 
convincing, unanswerable, in proportion as the 
Christian excellence thus apparent is more com- 
plete and shining. 

Now, would it be possible to estimate the power 
of this one element of Christian propagandism 
alone, if, wherever Christian profession is heard, a 
Christian excellence so manifest should be seen, 
that the caviler and the gainsayer should be put 
to silence ? If, whenever the doubting, the unen- 
lightened, the heathen come in contact with Chris- 
tian character and life, they should find in them, 
not indeed an ostentation of superior excellence, 
but those proofs of it, nevertheless, which are seen 
in fruits of the Spirit; ^^long-suffering," ''meek- 



222 PATMOS. 

ness '' and '' gentleness " being the golden links 
which unite ''love'' to ''faith?" When men as 
an actual fact, a felt consciousness, take know- 
ledge of Christians that they have '" been with 
Jesus," it is an argument before which a godless 
logic, or a sneering '' science falsely so-called," or 
an idolatrous prejudice, can never stand. To 
Christian books the enemies of Christianity may 
possibly find an ansAver. Christian lives are 
unanswerable. 

We have — in former pages — considered to some 
extent the place filled by the Christian personality 
and by Christian attainment among powers and 
instrumentalities by which the kingdom of Christ 
is promoted. Let us here notice this further point, 
that it is a fixed law in our Lord's kingdom, that 
ill the spread of Christianity over the world, the 
result in respect to character and life shall be not 
only a measure of its success, but also a main in- 
strument of propa^aiion. Christianity differs from 
all systems of philosophy in this — that while it is 
a faith it is also and pre-eminently a life. Philos- 
ophy may reign in the schools without any sign 
of its sway in society, or in the world's political 
organisms. Christianity is in its very nature per- 
vasive, practical, realizing its ends only so far as its 



PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION, 223 

results appear in regenerated men, regenerated soci- 
eties, a regenerated world. It is not mere formal 
truth, abstract doctrine, a thing for the cloister or 
the school. Its mission is to the men of the busy 
world, and it enters their life, penetrating to its 
most private retreats, and dealing with it in all its 
phases and forms. It is to purify them, ennoble 
them, elevate them, comfort them ; it meets them 
at their first going forth in active life, it attends 
them through all vicissitudes, it ministers to them 
as thej' die. There is no way possible in which 
those who become its friends and promoters can 
better serve its ends, and more efficienth^ com- 
mend it to others than by placing themselves 
under its control, wholly yielding themselves to 
its gentle yet mighty processes, and allowing it to 
work in them all its blessed ends. The Gospel 
thus becomes its own witness, and men '^ learn of 
the doctrine ■' that it truly is '• of God."' 

We do not, in this, of course, disparage the more 
formal ministry of the truth ; for it is '" hy the 
truth'' that the subjects of the great Christian 
chano'e are thus "sanctified.*' But there is occa- 
sion for emphasizing the fact that a formal minis- 
try of the truth, if it be that and no more, is 
already a failure. Its logic may be unanswerable ; 



224 PA TMOS, 

its appeal combine every quality of the highest 
eloquence ; crowds wait upon it with admiration 
and applause ; — yet if there be not those who go 
out from under it to exemplify its lessons, and 
embody its teachings in living forms, it is as 
utterly futile as mere words can ever be. The 
real preacher is the man or woman whom the 
preacher's instrumentality has w^on to the Saviour, 
and inspired to be ''faithful unto death." In all 
lands, under all skies, in all languages, the testi- 
mony that prevails is the testimony of well-order- 
ed, lovely, spotless Christian life. 

3. We may pass to a wider view, and study for 
a moment the operation of a regenerative force 
acting upon nations and ages by that same process 
in which it recovers and redeems individual men. 
We take pleasure in quoting here the vivid sen- 
tences with whicli the Dean of St. Paul's concludes 
his view of the '' Influence of Christianity upon 
National Character."* 

'' We have seen that Christianity is very differ- 
ent in its influence on different national charac- 
ters. It has wrought Avith nations as with men. 
For it does not merely gain their adherence, but 

* Three Lectures, delivered in St. Paul's, by Rev. R. W. Church, 
A.M., p. 136 et seq. 



PROGRESS AN'D CONSUMMATION. 225 

within definite limits it develops differences of 
temperament and mind. Human nature has many 
sides, and under the powerful and fruitful influ- 
ence of Christianity these sides are brought out 
in varying proportions. Unlike Mahometanism, 
which seems to produce a singularly uniform mo- 
notony of character in races, however naturally 
different, in which it gets a hold, Christianity has 
been in its results, viewed on a large scale, as sin- 
gularly diversified — not only diversified, but in- 
complete. It has succeeded, and it has failed. 
For it has aimed much higher, it has demanded 
much more, it has had to reckon with more subtle 
and complicated obstacles. If it had mastered its 
special provinces of human society as Mahome- 
tanism has mastered Arabs and Turks, the world 
would be very different from what it is. Yes ; it 
has fallen far short of that completeness. The 
fruits of power and discipline have been partial. 
It is open to any one, and easy enough, to point 
out the shortcomings of saints ; and much more, 
the faults and vices of Christian nations. 

'' But the lesson of history, I think, is this : not 
that all the good which might have been hoped 
for to society has followed from the appearance of 
Christian religion in the forefront of human life ; 



226 PA TMOS, 

not that in this willful and blundering world, so 
full of misused gifts and wasted opportunities and 
disappointed promises, mistakes and mischief have 
never been in its train ; not that in the nations 
where it has gained a footing it has mastered their 
besetting sins, the falsehood of one, the ferocity 
of another, the characteristic sensuality, the char- 
acteristic arrogance of others. But history teaches 
us this : that in tracing back the course of human 
improvement we come, in one case after another, 
upon Christianity as the source from which im- 
provement derived its principle and its motive ; 
we find no other source adequate to account for 
the new spring of amendment ; and without it no 
other sources of good could have been relied upon. 
* * * * But in our eagerness for improvement, 
it concerns us to be on our guard against the 
temptation of thinking that we can have the fruit 
or the flower and yet destroy the root ; that we 
may retain the high view of human nature which 
has grown with the growth of Christian nations, 
and discard that revelation of Divine love and 
human destiny of which that view forms a part or 
a consequence ; that we may retain the moral 
energy, and yet make light of the faith that pro- 
duced it." 



PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION, 227 

American Christians need to lay to heart these 
truths, and such as these. Their Christian life, 
springing and growing upon a new soil and in a 
new atmosphere, free from the embarrassing con- 
ditions which affect that of other nations, may 
justly be expected to be of a type that shall set 
forth with a conclusiveness not seen elsewhere, at 
once the power and the beneficence of the Gospel 
of Christ. They must not, indeed, undervalue or 
neglect their mission as messengers of truth to 
each shore of the older world ; planted as they are 
between the oceans, and able to make their voice 
heard alike beyond the Atlantic and beyond the 
Pacific. As citizens of a government supposed to 
embody principles, the rich, ripe fruit of centuries, 
in which human rights and human duties are set 
forth in their highest form, they must be true to 
their trust as depositaries of these principles in 
the world's behalf. But highest of all is the ob- 
ligation that is on them to set forth in the view of 
nations an example of what Christianity may do 
in giving to nationality its noblest attitude, and 
crowning it with a glory and a grace that can 
come of no mere political pre-eminence. Happy 
America, if its Christians shall be Christians 
indeed ! Blest among nations, O native land. 



228 PA TMOS. 

shalt tliou be, when indeed above thy starry ban- 
ner, irradiating it with its own brightness, and 
consecrating it by its presence, seen yet more afar 
and commanding a yet deeper devotion, shall float 
the Banner of tlie Cross — tiie blood-stained sym- 
bol of '' the Kingdom and Patience of Jesus 
Christ!" 

Never yet, in this world, has it been tested 
what, in the interest of Christ's spreading king- 
dom, would be the effect of a thorouglily Christian 
nationality ; — what would follow if not only in 
the government, the politics, the social life, the 
literature, the home-life and the school. Christian 
influence were paramount, but if in relations with 
foreign countries, especially with those still 
heathen, that same influence were so much a 
reigning one as that the nation itself, in all its 
transactions as such should present, on this con- 
spicuous theater, the testimony of a shining Chris- 
tian example. Such as this has never yet been 
seen. Upon the contrary, the Gospel, as preached 
at home and abroad, has found itself ever con- 
fronted by the damaging effect of the most glaring 
inconsistencj^ in the highest places. In some 
parts of the world, and in some instances, has this 
been carried so far, as is well known, that the 



PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION. 229 

Christian name has become in heathen estimation 
the synonym of all that is oppressive, or circum- 
venting, or brutal, or grasping. Must not like 
hindrances continue to appear so long as even the 
Christian nationality is so inadequately permeated 
by genuine Christian principle ? 

If to any quarter of the world more than another 
those who pray and hope for better things in this 
regard are entitled to look, would it not seem that 
this must be to our own land, so favored in many 
things, and in so many respects providentially 
placed at a point of advantage ? Our fresh and 
forming national life is like the young life of the in- 
dividual man. It is still plastic and impressible. 
It has not as yet hardened into hopelessness, nor 
degenerated into imbecility. Sureh^ it is possible, 
with God's blessing, if American Christians are 
found faithful, to make our Christianity such a 
power as that, in spite of all the hindrances that 
pour in upon us from the older world, and all those 
which originate amongst ourselves, our land shall 
be a very '' Mountain of the Lord," standing high 
and glorious among the mountains, and while the 
nations flow unto it, offering them not only a 
refuge but also a sanctuary. 

4. Without assuming to enter into any secrets 



230 PA TMOS. 

of the Divine purpose, there are surely here, in 
what we have considered, elements of Gospel 
progress which, taken in connection with the ma- 
terial possibilities before indicated, furnish a war- 
rant for Christian hope in its liighest ideal of the 
Gospel consummation. When truth may have for 
its propagation the consecrated wealth of Chris- 
tendom ; when Christian character and Christian 
life shall embody the types set forth in the Gospel 
itself; when Christian nationality shall become, 
in the ' degree it may, at once a beauty and a 
power : — may not the Lord's waiting people then 
claim the promise ? 

We urge these thoughts upon Christians, as 
motives to aspiration for a higher type of Christian 
attainment, and a more entire consecration of 
their whole self to God and to God's cause. Out 
of all comes this momentous question — whether 
all slowness in the spread of Christianity over the 
world, and all delay in the consummation of its 
gracious work everywhere, does not come home, 
in its causes and hence in its responsibility, to tli.e 
doors of Christians themselves ? What other real 
hindrances can be named, save those which arise 
out of the inertness and the backwardness of the 
men and women charged with this great mission ? 



PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION. 231 

The path lies open to any quarter of the world 
toward which Christian enterprise may direct its 
thought and its plan. The waiting nations stand 
with their gates thrown back, and listening for 
the sound of the coming feet of them that bring 
glad tidings of good things. To his own people, 
commissioned to send these heralds forth, God has 
multiplied material resources and means in such 
abundance that less than a tithe of all would suf- 
fice to answer every call, and fill the world with 
Christian preachers. And every one of these as 
he went upon his errand might carry in his heart 
the promise of his Lord that sowing in tears he 
should surely reap in joy. Why, then, instead of 
this, the painfully contrasted picture seen to-day ? 
For no other reason than that which brings the 
fault and lays it at the door of every Christian 
who, living below his privilege, sinfully comes 
short in a duty made sacred to him by all that is 
precious and priceless in his Lord's love and his 
Lord's death. 



IX. 

ENDURANCE UNTO THE END. 



ENDURANCE UNTO THE END. 

We resume our point of view on the rocky isle 
in the sea. In the purposely discursive treatment 
of our theme, we have wandered over ground 
which might seem only in a very general way 
comprehended in that outlook which has supplied 
us with our lesson and with its application. It 
needs but a step, however, to place us again side 
by side with him who is also our ''brother and 
companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and 
patience of Jesus Christ." 

It is no part of our intention, here, to study the 
deeper meanings of those apocalyptic visions 
which rise upon the view as we imagine ourselves 
so placed. The purpose of these pages is not ex- 
egesis, but simply suggestion, and if possible some 
quickening of Christian impulse in the direction 
of a higher Christian attainment. We are im- 
pressed, however, with one feature in these repre- 
sentations of the tremendous destinies of the- 
church and the world. The key to them all, so 
far as they concern practical Christianity, appears 

235 



236 FA TMOS. 

to be found in one pregnant clause, recurring 
regularly, like the refrain in some grave and mon- 
itory chant, in every one of those letters to the 
Seven Churches: — ^'' To Mm that overcometh!'^ 
As seen in the Apocalypse, the one great fact in 
the destiny of the Church is, that it is a vast, con- 
tinuous struggle crowned with glorious victory — 
a battle and an overcoming. To share this des- 
tiny is at once the severe ordeal and the trans- 
cendent privilege of all Christians. And they 
overcome — ''by the blood of the Lamb and by 
the word of their testimony." 

It seems a striking fact that a contest so entirely 
spiritual as is this to which we now refer, and in 
which the weapons are also spiritual, and never 
'' carnal," should be represented to us under forms 
implying such intensity of physical struggle, with 
material images best calculated to express ordeals 
and issues such as our imaginations invest with 
most of dread and terror. The reason of this can 
only be that the spiritual things so represented 
are themselves so intensely real, the actual ordeal 
so tremendous and its issue so vast, that only such 
pictures as these could adequately set them forth. 
This thought, too, has its lesson, and as we ima- 
gine ourselves seated beside the Apocalyptic Seer 



ENDURANCE UNTO THE END. 287 

on some rocky pinnacle of the lonely isle, and 
with him perceive Ihe whole theater of sea, and 
sky, and far-away islands and continents, occupied 
with the chanoino' scenery and incidents of this 
noble but awful drama we may seek to fix that 
lesson in our hearts. 

That the spiritual dispensation whose varying 
fortunes are thus foreshadowed is in every highest 
and truest sense a Mngdom^ we have seen. That 
it is also ^patience we have seen. Various prac- 
tical suggestions coming in connection with these 
two main conceptions, we have tried to bring 
out and impress. The leading idea which we 
have desired to carry through all, is the place ap- 
pointed, alike in the kingdom and in the patience, 
to the Christian personality, — the absolute esseri- 
tialness, in the order, and progress, and high issue 
of the whole scheme, of personal Christian excel- 
lence. Whatever view is taken, we find, of the 
kingdom of Christ in the general, when analyzed 
and traced, separates the body into its members, 
reduces the whole to its parts, and concentrates 
upon those parts, those individualities, the whole 
interest of the lessons taught, the practical burden 
of the accountability implied. When we study 
the same kingdom as also a patience, we find it 



2^8 PA TMOS. 

impossible to deal alone with the general concep- 
tion ; it is the individual Christian man or wo- 
man who comes forward to toil, to suffer, to over- 
come " by the blood of the Lamb and by the word 
of testimony." These apocalyptic scrolls, there- 
fore, on which the pen of the exile records the 
visions as they pass, are a message to each indi- 
vidual Christian. They represent as truly the 
struggle of each as the struggle of all, and singling 
them out, one by one, they say to each personally, 
'' Be thou faithful unto death ! " That which we 
have to notice, here, is the way in which this in- 
volves the whole idea of the struggle and triumph 
of Christ's kingdom in this world. 

What we here state appears, for example, as 
the natural and logical conclusion of the course of 
thought so far followed. We have found that all 
which most concerns the fortunes of our Lord's 
advancing kingdom revolves around and centers 
in the Christian personality. Whatever of hope 
IS seen in the multiplying of churches becomes a 
hope just in proportion as these churches are seen 
to be composed of faithful men and women. 
Whatever of advantage, of resources, of instru- 
mentality, of opportunity, is furnished in tlie 
working together of great and striking providen- 



ENDURANCE UNTO THE END. 289 

ces, is a Christian power or a Christian advantage 
only as some Christian is seen using them in the 
name and spirit and authority of the mighty Lord 
of all. The lesson of Christian history is that 
achievement has been the work of individuals, not 
of masses ; or if in any sense of masses, still of 
these only as they have moved under impulses 
supplied from some central personal source, or 
have been led and inspired by some masterful 
personal championship. When we study Chris- 
tendom in its present aspects, and compare its re- 
sources with its responsibilities, we find that the 
world as a field will be actually occupied only as 
from the hills of Zion her sons and daughters shall 
be seen descending ready for their mission in any 
quarter of the globe to which the work calls them, 
and sustained as they go by the ready gifts of 
such as remain. It is the sophistry of mere world- 
liness and love of personal ease or personal pos- 
sessions, to lay the responsibility of this great 
calling upon Christendom as a whole and leave it 
there. The kingdom and patience of Jesus recog- 
nize no '' Christendom ;" they know onlj^ Chris- 
tian men and Christian women in their individu- 
ality and in their individual responsibility and 
charge. The word is ever — '' Be thou faithful." 



240 PA TMOS. 

From all this there can be but one conclusion. 
So far forth as the sphere of each Christian is con- 
cerned, his personal identification with that grand 
spiritual order and movement to which he belongs 
is perfect ; and he can never, without violating 
fundamental principles in his Christian relation- 
ship, make his own spiritual interest or his per- 
sonal usefulness one thing, and the interest and 
destiny of Christ's kingdom another. If he is a 
failure, so far as he is concerned the kingdom of 
Christ suffers defeat; if he be a success and a 
power, the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ 
triumph in his person. 

In the next place, the Christian personality is 
the kingdom of Christ. It is '-' within you^'' said 
Jesus to the little group of disciples as they stood 
before him. They looked for it to come in some 
momentous changes in the world around them ; 
in national revolution, in the revelation of a Mes- 
siahship before which the world should bow down, 
— in a King, a scepter, and a throne. They were 
watching for its signs, listening to catch the dis- 
tant echoes of the shouting multitude, the tramp- 
ing feet of the thousands and thousands who 
should usher this King to his throne. '' It is 
alieady here," said Jesus. '-'• You are yourselves 



ENDURANCE UNTO THE END. 241 

that kingdom. It is ivithin^ you." The fact has 
stood unchanged, through all the ages since. The 
Lord, in this sense, was not in '' the strong wind " 
of great national revolutions, nor in " the earth- 
quake" of mighty commotions under which the 
world reeled, nor in ''the fire" that laid waste 
empires and continents, fed by the fuel of their 
wickedness; he has been ever in " the still, small 
voice." The seat of the advancing kingdom has 
been ever in the humble heart of the contrite one, 
the joyful heart of the believing one. So many 
as Jesus has had in the world to love him and 
speak for him, so far has his kingdom grown, and 
the rejoicing angels have had for their theme, not 
empires gained to some formal profession of Chris- 
tian faith, but penitent hearts yielded to the 
blessed Lord of all. 

We repeat, therefore, that the Christian person- 
ality is the kingdom of Christ. How can it be 
otherwise, then, than that Jesus should reign just 
as his own people are his people indeed ? It is 
wonderful, no doubt, that God should center a 
movement so vast, comprehending such infinite 
interests in its plan, and sweeping through eter- 

* The point urged will be substantially the same if the other 
translation be taken — " The kingdom of God is amo72g you." 
11 



242 PA TMOS. 

nity in its results — should center it in these weak, 
changeful, sinful human hearts; — wonderful but 
true. And not only true, but eminently consist- 
ent ; for these human hearts, with all in them that 
is weak and poor, he has made meet for even such 
a use. Their pulsations, in joy or in sorrow, in 
love or in hate, in worship or in rebellion, beat on 
forever. The conquest of one of them to himself 
is more than an empire won, for it shall still be 
paying its tribute of love and service, and still be 
adding its own joy to that sum of created felicity 
which is such a delight to the Infinite Heart, when 
empires are remembered no more. Regained from 
the ruin of the fall, he finds in them the fulfill- 
ment of the beneficent design which had seemed 
to suffer such a defeat, while instead of the one 
holy man in the earthly Paradise, he finds cover- 
ing all the heavenly hills, the thousands of thou- 
sands of those who, lost in the fall, are recovered 
in the redemption. We have, in these facts, the 
reason for what we see when the King of Glory 
passes by all the world's grandeurs and sets his 
throne, concentrates his dominion, in the regene- 
rated human heart. The reason is plain ; and 
equally so is the lesson. What Christians ought 
we to be, if this be true ! How shameful and sad 



ENDURANCE UNTO THE END. 243 

become our defections, our inconsistencies, our 
weak compliances, our feeble service, our scant 
and meager offerings ! Shall the world, indeed, 
find only tliu as representing the power and be- 
neficence of Christ's kingdom ? Shall t}ii% be all 
that stands revealed under the scrutiny of that 
criticism which estimates the reality and legiti- 
macy of our religion by its fruits ? Deep in our 
hearts let the warning words be written, that of 
necessity the world finds in our own Christian 
personality all that it sees or can see of that king- 
dom which is " righteousness, peace, and joy in the 
Holy Ghost!" 

Then, further, it is evident that the kingdom 
must reach its consummation just through the 
permanence and steady spread of its results as 
seen in the steadfast graces and multiplying num- 
bers of the Christians themselves. To stand fast 
in his own place, and bring at least one to his side, 
is the very lightest view of each Christian's respon- 
sibility. Should each one, by example, by testi- 
mony, by loving entreaty, '' praying always with 
all prayer," bring one soul to Jesus, how would 
the number of the saved be swollen just in that 
alone I To think that there should be multitudes 
who in the course of their whole lives do not even 



244 PA TMOS, 

so iiiiich as this ; that, saved themselves '^ so as by- 
fire, " if saved at all, the mass of professing Chris- 
tians enter heaven with not a soul to ever, in all 
eternity, greet them there as the direct instrument 
of its salvation ; that, upon the contrary, the bal- 
ance is even a doubtful one of the good they do 
with the evil necessarily resulting from a wavering 
walk and a conversation scarcely tinged with the 
godliness of the Gospel ; while in the burning 
that consumes the wood, hay, stubble of their im- 
perfect Christian development, the dear Lord's 
kingdom itself suffers loss ! It is saddening to 
reflect that of the majority of professing Chris- 
tians this must be true. What an access of power, 
then, w^ould the kingdom at once receive, if the 
fact in this regard should change, and a steadfast 
host stand up all through the Christian world, 
witnesses for Jesus unimpeached and unimpeach- 
able ! 

To this end, how needful ''the patience." A 
favorite French writer, Bernardin de St. Pierre, 
has somewhere a beautiful passage, in which he 
describes a ship arriving in port, coming home 
from the far-away Indies. His picture was sketch- 
ed at a time when such a voj^age was something 
different from what it is now — longer, far more 



ENDURANCE UNTO THE END. 245 

perilous, visiting lands then strange and full of 
mysteries formidable to the superstitious mind, 
and with less opportunity to relieve the tedium 
of the long sea-journey by occasional pauses in 
friendly ports by the way. 

'* I remember," he says, *•' that Avhen I arrived 
in France, in a vessel which came from the Indies, 
so soon as the sailors beheld the shores of their 
native land, they became for the most part inca- 
pable of any of the customary duties. Some gazed 
upon it, without power to turn away their eyes ; 
some were putting on their gayest dresses, as if 
they were in a moment to land ; some were con- 
gratulating each other, some were weeping. As 
they drew near, their agitation increased. Having 
been absent several years, they could not cease 
admiring the verdure of the little hills, the foliage 
of the trees, and even the rocks of the shore, 
covered with sea-weed and moss, as if all these 
objects had been new to them. The bells of the 
villages where they were born, and which they re- 
cognized far away in the country, and named one 
after the other, filled them with delight. But 
when the ship entered the harbor, and when they 
saw upon the quays their friends, their fathers, 
their mothers, their children, who, weeping for 



246 PA TMOS. 

joy, reached out their arms towards them, and 
called them by their names, it was impossible to 
keep them any longer on board. They leaped to 
the shore, and it was necessary, according to the 
custom of the port, to provide for the needs of the 
ship another crew." 

It was a moment of unspeakable rapture, but 
purchased at the cost of long and heroic seafaring, 
courage in danger, patience under hardship, fidel- 
ity in duty, subordination to superiors, steadfast- 
ness in all the vicissitudes of a wearisome, labori- 
ous and dangerous voyage. And the vessel which 
bore them was the charge of each, as it was the 
charge of all. Often had its safety, with the lives 
of all on board, depended upon the watchfulness 
of a few, perhaps of even one. Each day had 
brought its ordeal of manhood, whether in the 
tedious calm or the threatening storm ; and each 
sailor knew that the good ship whose deck he trod 
carried what for him was a richer freight than silks 
or spices — his own hope of again beholding the 
hills and roofs of dear home. How often, in the 
stress of the gale, had he, swaying from side to 
side over the abyss, as he clung to the reeling 
mast ; how often in the dark night, when no star 
shone on the sea, and the fierce elements battled 



ENDURANCE UNTO THE END. 247 

for him as their prey — how often had his heart 
yearned with remembrances of snnny France, and 
with longings for a glimpse of its welcoming shore. 
Simply by patient attention to duty, by cheerful 
subordination, by promptness to the call by night 
or by day, trusting in the guidance wiser than his 
own, and the eye truer than his own which kept 
hourly watch of compass and chart, he reaches at 
last the fulfillment of his desire, and in the rap- 
ture of the leap on shore forgets the years of 
danger and of toil. 

In all that grand movement and consummation 
of great spiritual designs of which we have been 
speaking, each individual has, we see, along with 
his deep personal interest, a personal charge and 
service. It must of necessity tax him and test 
him in many ways. " Blessed is he that endiireth^ 
for he shall receive the crown of life." The ship 
freighted with the dearest interests of his race, is 
freighted also with his own, and sharing with 
others the duties and perils of the voyage, he 
shares also their hopes. 

The kingdom, we know, is to reach its consum- 
mation in a very wide and grand meaning of the 
word. The arrival home, one after the other, of 
saved souls, is not all, nor the greatest of what is 



248 PA TMOS. 

implied in the confident expectation of all Chris- 
tians, in this regard. There is to be a final and 
complete working out of those designs of the 
kingdom which have respect to the glory of God 
and the welfare of the intelligent universe, taken 
as a whole. Of this, our minds are not competent 
to gain any adequate view, even in hope. What 
a day, nevertheless, must that be of which the 
Apostle speaks so grandly and yet so obscurely, 
because in the nature of the case he could not 
speak plainly, where he says, '' Then cometh the 
end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom 
to God, even the Father ; when he shall have put 
dow^n all rule, and all authority, and all power. 
For he must reign till he hath put all enemies 
under his feet. * * * * And when all things 
shall be subdued under him, then shall the Son 
himself be subject unto him that hath put all 
things under him, that God may be all in all." 

Let us imagine, if we can, however imperfectly, 
what it must be, when at last the great Example 
of Patience '' shall see of the travail of his soul 
and shall be satisfied ; " when the vast undertak- 
ing shall be complete, nothing forgotten, nothing- 
neglected, nothing failed ; of all whom he came 
to save not one lost or missing ; — when he shall 



ENDURANCE UNTO THE END. 249 

stand before the Father, foremost of the ten thou- 
sand times ten thousand, and thousands of thou- 
sands, the Man who suffered, yet the Son of God, 
more resplendent in his glory than angel or arch- 
angel, though once his visage was more marred 
than any man's — when he shall there appear, and 
laying at the Father's feet the scepter of media- 
torial sovereignty, shall present to him all these, 
with all other great results of his mighty enter- 
prise, and return into the Father's bosom, still 
infinitely the Well-Beloved. What shall we say 
of the '' patience " then ? of his ? of our own ? of 
that which saints and martyrs have shown ? Will 
it not be a chief element in the glory ? Will the 
Cross of Calvary be a symbol of shame, a syno- 
nym of burden-bearing and soul-oppression then ? 
Will apostle, or reformer, or missionary, or any 
faithful servant of Jesus, tried in any way, wish 
then that the occasion for patience had been less ? 
If it were possible for an angel to repine, or to 
wish his own heaven any different from what it is, 
we might almost imagine that we see, in the fore- 
cast of that great scene, many a hovering seraph 
coveting for himself the privilege of having come 
up to that day and that hour out of like tribula- 
tions, and wishing that into his own cup of im- 



250 PA TMOS. 

mortal joy might be dropped this supreme. element 
of felicity — the consciousness of having suffered 
and overcome, of having borne the day's heat and 
not fainted, of having carried the appointed bur- 
den through to the end. 

"Jerusalem the golden ! 

With milk and honey blest ! 
Beneath thy contemplation 
Sink heart and voice opprest. 

*' I know not, oh ! I know not 
W^hat joys await us there ; 
What radiancy of glory, 

What bliss beyond compare. 

' They stand, those* halls of Sion, 

All jubilant with song, 
And bright Avith many an angel, 

And all the martyr throng ; 

" The Prince is ever in them, 
The daylight is serene ; 
The pastures of the blessed 
V Are decked in glorious sheen. 

^ -^ ■^ ■^ Hfi 

" O sweet and blessed Country, 
The Home of God's elect ! 
O sweet and blessed Country, 
That eager hearts expect ! 

** Jesu, in mercy bring us 

To that dear land of rest : 
Who art, with God the Father, 
And Spirit, ever blest." 



PUBLISHED BY S. C. GAVGGS 6- CO., CHICAGO. 

GETTING ON IN THE WORLD; or, Hints on Suc- 
cess in Life.— By Wm. Mathews, LL.D., Professor of English Literature^ 
etc., in the University of Chicago. Beautifully printed and handsomely bound. 

Price, I vol., i2mo., Cloth $2 25 I Half calf binding, gilt top ..$3 50 

The same, gilt edges 250 | Full calf, gilt edges 500 

Contents : — Success and Failure — Good and Bad Luck — Choice of a Pro- 
fessioti — Physical Culture — Concentration — Self- Reliance — Originality in 
Aijns and Methods — Attention to Details — Practical Talent — Decision — 

Manne-} Business Habits — Self- Advertising — The Will and the Way — 

Reserved Poive? — JEconomy of Time — Money., its' Use and Abuse — Merca7itile 
Failures — Over-Work and Under-Rest — True and False Success. 

" A book in the highest degree attractive, * * and which will be sure to/^_^ 
in dollars and cejits many times over the cost of the work, and the time devoted 
to its perusal." — Lockport Journal^ New York. 

'' It is sound, morally and mentally. It gives no one-sided view of life ; it does 
not pander to the lower nature ; but it is high-toned, correctly toned throughout. 
* * There is an earnestness and even eloquence in this volume which makes 
the author appear to speak to us from the living page. It reads like a speech. 
There is an electric fire about every sentence." — Ej>isco_pal Register., Philadelphia. 

"" There is no danger of speaking in too high terms of praise of this volume. 
As a work of art it is a gem. As a counselor it speaks the wisdom of the ages. As a 
teacher it illustrates the true philosophy of life by the experience of eminent men of 
every class and calling. It warns by the story of signal failures, and encourages by 
the record of triumphs that seemed impossible. It is a book of facts and not of 
theories. The men who have succeeded in life are laid under tribute, and made to 
divulge the secret of their success. They give vastly more than ' hints ;' the)- 
make a revelation. Thej'- show that success lies not in luck, but in pluck. 
Instruction and inspiration are the chief features of the work which Prof. Mathews 
has done in this volume." — Christian Era^ Boston. 



THE GREAT CONVERSERS, and Other Essays.- 

By Wm. Mathews, LL.D., author of '' Getting On in the World." 

I volume, i2mo., 306 pages, with Map, price %^ 75 

^ As fascinating as anything in fiction." — Concord Monitor. 

" These pages are crammed with interesting facts about literary men and lite- 
rary work." — New York Evening Mail. 

^' They are written in that charming and graceful style, which is so attractive 
in this author's writings, and the reader is continually reminded by their ease and 
grace of the elegant compositions of Goldsmith and Irving." — Boston Transcript. 

*' Twenty essays, all treating lively and agreeable themes, and in the eas}--, 
polished and sparkling style that has made the author famous as an essayist. * * 
The most striking characteristic of Prof. Mathews' writing is its wonderful wealth 
of illustration. * * One will make the acquaintance of more authors in the 
course of a single one of his essays than are probably to be met with in the same 
limited space anywhere else in the whole realm of our literature," — The Chicago 
Tribune, 



PUBLISHED BY S. C. GRIGGS 6- CO., CHICAGO. 
THE WORLD ON WHEELS, and Other Sketches.- 

By Benj. F. Taylur. Illustrated, i vol., 121110. Price, $1.50. 

'' Full of humor and sharp as a Damascus blade.'' — Presbyterian., Phil a. 

'•' The pen-pictures of B. F. Taylor are among the most brilliant and eccentric 
productions of the day. They are like the music of Gottscharlk played by Gotts- 
chalk himself; or like sky-rockets that burst in the zenith, and fall in showers of 
fiery rain. They are word-wonders, reminding us of necromancy, "with the dazzle 
and bewilderment of their rapid succession." — Chicago Tridu?ie. 

^' Reader, do you want to laugh ? Do you want to cry ? Do you want to 
climb the Jacob's ladder of imagination, and dwell among the clouds of fancy foj. 
a little while at least ? Do you ? Then get B. F. Taylor's World on Wheels, read 
it, and experience sensations you never felt before ! * * It is a book of ' word 
pictures,' a string of pearls, the very poesy of thought."— TYz^ Christian^ Si. Louis. 

'^Another of Benj. F. Taylor's wonderful word painting books. * * In 
purity of style and originality of conception, Taylor has no superiors in this 
country. The book before us is a gem in evsry way. It is quaint, poetical, melo- 
dious, unique, rare as rare flowers are rare. He has an exquisite faculty of illustra- 
tion that is unsurpassed in the whole range of American literature." — St. Louis 
Dispatch. 



OLD-TIME PICTURES and SHEAVES of RHYME. 

By Benj. F. Taylor. Red line edition, small quarto, silk cloth, with eight fine 
full page illusttrations. 

Price $2 00 

The same, full gilt edges an 1 gilt side- 2 50 

John G. Whittier ivrites : — '"'' It gives me pleasure to see the poems of B. F. 
Taylor issued b)^ your house in a form worthy of their merit. Such pieces as the 
''Old Village Choir ^ *■ The Skylark^ ' The Vane on the Spire^ and ''June^ 
deserve their good setting. * * I do not know of anyone who so well reproduces 
the home scenes of long ago. There is a quiet humor that pleases me." 

'*' Unless it be Whittier, we know of no American poet so sweet, tender and 
gentle in his lyrics as B. F. Taylor. No writer of to-day sings the praises of rural 
life and scenery as eloquently, and we do not wonder that many of his poems have 
become classic. The holiday volume of his happy verses, Old Time Pictures and 
Sheaves of Rhyme is a very eloquent and daintily bound volume, and comes from 
that growing and reliable publishing house of the West, S. C. Griggs & Company, 
of Chicago. Taking up this handsomely printed book, we have to linger on the 
delightful imagery and graceful diction of its pages, glowing as they are with pure 
and tender thoughts, and the earnest, indescribable music of sunny fields and rural 
joys. * * No one can read it but will be the better for so doing." — The Albany 
Morning Express, 



PUBLISHED BY S.C. GRIGGS &^ CO., CHICAGO. 
PRE-HISTORIC RACES OF THE UNITED STATES. 

By J. W. Foster, LL.D., Author of " The Physical Geography of the Mississippi 
Valley," etc. 415 pages, crown 8vo, with a large number of illustrations. 

Price, cloth $3 50 

Half calf binding, gilt top _ 6 00 

Full calf, gilt edges 7 50 

'' One of the best and clearest accounts we have seen of those grand monuments 
of a forgotten race." — London Saturday Review. 

'* The reader will find it more fascinating than his last favorite novel." — 
Eclectic Magazine., N. Y. 

'' The book is literally crowded with astonishing and valuable facts." — 
Boston Post, 

" It is an elegant volume and a valuable contribution to the subject. * * * 
Contains just the kind of information in clear, compressed and intelligible form, 
which is adapted to the mass of readers." — Appleton'^s Popular Science Monthly. 

" The book is typographically perfect, and with its admirable illustrations and 
convenient index is really elegant and a sort of luxury to possess and read. * * 
Dr. Foster's style reminds us of Tyndall and Proctor, at their best. * * He 
goes over the ground, inch by inch, and accumulates information of surprising 
interest and importance, bearing on this subject, which he gives in his crowded but 
most instructive and entertaining chapters in a thoroughly scientific but equally 
popular way. We have marked whole pages of his book for quotation, and finally 
from sheer necessity have been compelled to put the whole volume in quotation 
marks, as one of the few books that are indispensable to the student, and scarcely 
less important for the intelligent reader to have at hand for reference." — Golden 
Age., Neiv York. 



A MANUAL OF GESTURE.— with over loo Figures, 
embracing a complete system of Notation, with the Principles of Interpretation 
and Selections for Practice. By Prof. A. M. Bacon. 

Price _ $1 75 

'' Prof. Bacon has given us a work that, in thoroughness and practical value, 
deserves to rank among the most remarkable books of the season. There has in 
fact, been no work on the subject yet oflfered to the public which approaches it for 
exhaustiveness and completeness of detail. * * It is of the utmost value, 
not merely to students, but to lawyers, clergymen, teachers, and public speakers, 
and its importance as an assistant in the formation of a correct and appropriate 
style of action can hardly be over-e«timated." — The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

'' Prof. Bacon's Manual seems expressly arranged for the help of those who 
study alone and have undertaken self-instruction in the art of persuasive delivery. 
The work in the hands of our ministry, well studied, would have the effect of 
emphasizing the living words of the Gospel all over the land, and making them 
two-edged with meaning."— 7"^^ Chicago Pulpit. 



PUBLISHED BY S. C CRICGS ^ CO., CHICAGO. 
PH-ILOSOPHY OF THE PLAN OF SALVATION - 

By Rev. J. 13. Walker, D.D., with an Introductory Essay by Calvin E. Stowe, 
D.D. A new edition, with supplementary chapter by the author. Sixty-seventh 
thousand, i vol. nmo. Price, $1.50. 

" Though written with great simplicity, it is evidently the production of a 
master mind. * ^'^ and few works are more adapted to bring skeptics of a certain 
class to a stand. * * It is the disclosure of the actual process of mind through 
which the author passes, from the dark regions of do-nbt and infidelity to the clear 
light and conviction of a sound and heartfelt belief of the truth as it is in Jesus. 

'' There is in many parts of this treatise, a force of argument and a power of 
conviction almost resistless. 

"It is a work of extraordinary power. * * We think it is more likely to 
lod^e an impression in the hu77tan conscience^ in favor of the divine authority 
of Christianity., than any work of the modern press." — London Evangelical 
Magazine., England, 

'^ No single volume we ever read has been so satisfactory a demonstration of 
the truth of religion, or has had so strong a controlling influence over our habits 
of thought. * * No better book can be put into the hands of the honest and 
intellectual skeptic. It is overwhelmingly convincing to reason, and leaves the 
doubter nothing but his passions and prejudices to bolster him up. * * Every 
minister's library should have a copy." — The Methodist Protestant^ Baltimore, 

'' It fills a place in theological literature which no other book does. It is the 
style of the argument which gives power, impressiveness, and perennial freshness 
to this production. * * We have found in pastoral experience that we could 
place no better uninspired book than this in the hands of intelligent doubters, or 
in the hands of new converts, for their aid and guidance. Those who are not 
familiar with it, will do well to procure a copy and study it carefully. It is worth 
more than some large libraries to those who read for their profiting.'' — The Christ- 
ian at Work.^ New York. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT; Or Phil- 
osophy of the Divine Operation in the Redemption 

of M SI n . — Being volume second of " The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation." 
By Rev. J. B. Walker, D.D. Fourth edition, revised and enlarged. Price, 

$1.50- 

'' The author's former able works have prepared the public for the rich treas- 
ures of thought in this volume. It is a book of foundation principles, and deals in 
the verities of the gospel as with scientific facts. It is an unanswerable argument 
in behalf of Christ's life, mission, and doctrine, and especially rich in its teachings 
concerning the office and work of the Spirit. No volume has lately issued from the 
press which brings so many timely truths to the public attention. While it is 
metaphysical and thorough, it is also clever, forceful, winning for its grand truth's 
sake, and every -way readable. The author has wrought a great work for the 
Christian Church, and every 7ninister and teacher should ar77i himself tvith 
strong weapons by perusing the arguments of this book. It is printed and bound 
in the exquisite style of all publications which issue from Messrs. S. C. Griggs & Co.'s 
establishment." — Methodist Recorder^ Pittsburgh, 



f/ 



